<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Communist Road is Mine by paperandsong</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25108117">The Communist Road is Mine</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperandsong/pseuds/paperandsong'>paperandsong</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>19th Century CE France RPF, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera &amp; Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Allegorical Sex, Anarchy, Angst, Arson, Bisexuality, Bleak, Canon Compliant, Communism, Dark, Dark Erik, Death, Der Freischütz - Freeform, Emotional, F/M, Gothic, Gunpowder, Historical, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, Lovers To Enemies, M/M, Multi, Operas, Palais Garnier, Paris (City), Paris Commune, Paris Commune 1871, Paris is Burning, Polyamory, Poor Erik, Red Death - Freeform, Rue de Rivoli, Sexual Content, Tuileries, Violence, Vive la Commune, but I wish they hadn't burned down so much art, or killed their hostages</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:21:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,894</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25108117</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperandsong/pseuds/paperandsong</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A relationship with an anarchist couple during the 1871 Paris Commune draws Erik into events he would typically want no part in. Sets up certain narrative details and provides historical context for Commune references found in Leroux's novel.</p><p>Leroux-based, pre-Leroux, pre-Christine, very Leroux-compliant.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Erik | Phantom of the Opera/Original Character(s), Erik | Phantom of the Opera/The Persian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. March 1871</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>What was the 1871 Paris Commune? I'll try to explain it, as I understand it:</p><p>The Paris Commune was a radical, revolutionary government that ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. The Franco-Prussian War had led to the capture of Emperor Napoleon III in September 1870 and the collapse of the Second French Empire. Paris was under siege by the Prussians for four months, ending in January 1871, causing food shortages and general suffering in Paris. The French Government abandoned Paris during the siege and the city was primarily defended during this time by the National Guard, the local Parisian militia, rather than the French Army. In March, the National Guard and a group of communists and anarchists took control of the city, forming the Commune. The Commune governed Paris for seventy-two days, imposing its own rules until it was brutally suppressed by the French Army (also called the Versaillais Army) during la semaine sanglante, from May 21 to 28.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>     Michèle and Louis came to Paris from a very small village. For a time, they worked side by side in the same textile factory and slept side by side in a dreary little apartment and they were very happy. They came to find, however, that their life was not their own and they were swept up by great events from which there was no escape. <br/>
     During the rat-eating days of the Siege of Paris, they clung to each other in hunger and desperation. They had long ago declared themselves atheists, Michèle an anarchist and Louis a communist, but secretly they each whispered prayers of supplication. If only they could survive the winter.<br/>
     Spring arrived and with it the revolution they had been waiting for. The day M. President Adolphe Thiers tried and failed to disarm the beleaguered citizens of Paris they both eagerly joined the National Guard. They were among the devoted Communards who occupied the massive and incomplete construction site of Garnier’s Paris Opera house. They were tasked with the dreadfully boring work of storing food and ammunition, guarding it, and distributing it to civilians and National Guardsmen, who gradually became one and the same. <br/>
       Michèle worked above ground, organizing food distribution from what would one day be the elegant grand foyer. But Louis was given the most menial of tasks - the construction of a hidden passageway from an incomplete dressing room down into the first cellar. It took around a week to nail the planks of the passage together, creating a kind of bridge leading down into the depths of the grand building - though not its deepest depths. There they built a storage room near a little well and one by one they rolled barrels of gunpowder down into the darkness. <br/>
     As they worked they sang and laughed and mimicked the monotonous call of street vendors selling vats of salted fish or barrels of rum; these were the early days of the Commune, when it was still possible to hear singing and laughter as people went about their work. <br/>
     Because of the explosive potential of these barrels, they were guarded day and night. Louis was given the night, and a little key to the room, which he wore on a chain around his neck.<br/>
    Michèle and Louis were no longer able to work side by side. They were not able to sleep side by side, though they were held captive under the same roof of the unfinished Opera house by deep devotion to their cause. They no longer even slept the same hours. They would never have seen each other at all if Michèle did not occasionally creep down the passageway, just as Louis had showed her, to keep him company in the nighttime. They would sit before a glowing yellow lantern set on a little table and talk and hold hands. Sometimes she would crawl under the table to sleep while he kept watch over the storage room and the dangerous, yet subdued, barrels of gunpowder.<br/>
     And sometimes, Michèle crept down the passageway to find herself enfolded in her lover’s arms, pressed against a cold wall, her blue red-striped trousers unbuttoned by his eager fingers. Now that the Revolution had arrived, she wore trousers tied up with a slip of rope. How could she bring about a new world in a corset? They were almost the same size, Michèle and Louis, and they exchanged clothing frequently; Michèle stole his clothing and often forgot to bring it back to him. They shared the same height, the same slight frame of an underfed childhood, the same dark hair and eyes. If one did not know better, they might conclude they were sister and brother. But to see him press her against the wall in this way, one could be certain they were not.</p><p>    There was one who saw. He placed a gloved hand on the stone wall before him and held his breath as he watched them, just behind a line of shadow. At first he believed them to be two men. They whispered to each other, but they were not quiet and he soon heard the unmistakable sound of a woman in full pleasure. As they were both in trousers he could not at first tell which was the woman and which was the young guard he had been spying on for the last few nights. Not until her cap slipped off her head and a lush mass of dark hair fell behind her shoulders. An arousing confusion.<br/>
     Their cries were growing louder. His one hand leaned deeply into the wall for support, while his other traveled towards his own trousers. It was clear this was not an encounter between strangers. There was a gentleness to their actions, an intimacy that could not be imitated. They each held the back of the other’s head, pressing the other’s mouth into a kiss so long and deep there was no space between them. No room even for air.<br/>
      A line of sweat rolled out from beneath his mask. He swiped at it with a gloved finger. He had been a voyeur before - the building was vast and when the construction site was empty it offered numerous places for lovers to hide themselves and their furtive caresses, unaware that he crawled in their shadows. But those were not really lovers. These two children before him loved each other. Knowing this weighted the touch of his own hand with despair. He could not escape the certainty that no one would ever touch him like that. He gave up and let himself go limp.<br/>
    The young woman spent the night sleeping on the ground. The guard was not supposed to sleep so he sat next to her on the damp floor, winding his fingers through her hair. In the morning they returned above ground together, arms wrapped around the other’s waist. He followed them with his eyes.<br/>
  <br/>
     He had heard them scratching on the other side of the walls. He heard them scurrying about above him, shouting orders, crying out in victory. He heard their shots and cannons. But he did not care about their Commune. He did not care about the Empire or the Republic, the Prussians or his fellow countrymen. He had no countrymen. Across continents, royalty and aristocracy and the bourgeoisie and the peasantry alike had all been equally cruel to him. He did not care what the Communards did, so long as they did not disturb him in his lakeside kingdom. <br/>
     But he was also lonely. So lonely he had lost any sense of how long he had lived underground. So lonely he could not keep himself away from the young guard.<br/>
      Construction on the Opera house had begun around a decade before and had been almost complete when the Prussians attacked the city. M. Garnier had gone to Italy to recover from the months of deprivation under the Siege, leaving his assistant, M. Louvet in his place. But the Opera house now lay in the hands of anarchists and communists and it may never be finished. He may never get to see an Opera performed on what he liked to consider his stage. It was an enraging thought as he had already gone through all the trouble to prepare himself a secret passage to a private box so that he might one day be part of that glittering audience.<br/>
     The daytime guards were older men, severe and twitchy. They would probably shoot before saying “Halt!” But this young nighttime guard was a lover; he would not be so rash; his sleepy  young man who stood at the edge of his kingdom, at the threshold of the Opera and the Underworld, this fresh faced uniformed young man. Perhaps he would enjoy some company on the nights she did not come? Perhaps he would be amused with a few tricks? With a little music? He approached slowly, quiet as a mouse, or quieter still, the cat that would eat the mouse. <br/>
“Good evening,” he said in a most normal voice. <br/>
     Naturally, the young guard turned around with his weapon drawn.<br/>
“Halt! Who are you?”<br/>
     He put up his hands in surrender. <br/>
“I am Erik.”</p><p>     Louis kept his weapon drawn as he listened to Erik’s explanation that he was but a worker who had used the cellar as a refuge during the Siege and had not known it was over. But he did not look like any ordinary worker. He wore a well cut suit with gloves and a curious leather mask. Louis did not lower his pistol as he spoke. <br/>
“Well, it is time to come out. Paris was abandoned to the Prussians, but a new government has filled the space left by those cowards in Versailles. It is a new dawn, Monsieur. You should offer yourself to the cause. It is a revolution for workers such as yourself.”<br/>
     Erik snorted at this idea.<br/>
“Perhaps. I will consider it. Do you play cards?”<br/>
“You want to play cards?”<br/>
“Yes,” he said, removing a deck from his jacket.<br/>
“Go away, I am working. You aren’t supposed to be here.”<br/>
“What would be worse - if they caught you sleeping or if they caught you playing cards? You cannot guard all that gunpowder if you are asleep.”<br/>
     Louis lowered his pistol and nervously passed the rest of the evening playing spades with his strange yet elegant visitor. The yellow light of the kerosene lantern was perhaps a little too forgiving and Louis could not fully perceive Erik’s ugliness: the pallor of the skin the mask could not hide, the unearthly proportions of his limbs. Louis was soon too at ease with the man, and deep into the evening he even allowed Erik to show him a few card tricks. The boy was delighted.<br/>
“Do you play chess? Tomorrow I could return with a set.”<br/>
“You even have a chess set down here?” Louis was amused further.<br/>
“I have many things down here. Tomorrow evening then?”<br/>
“No. I will have a visitor tomorrow,” Louis said, casting his eyes to the floor.<br/>
“Ah, I see. Well, perhaps we could all play cards together?” Erik said, attempting to cover the scent of longing in his offer.<br/>
“You could come again. She would find you interesting.”<br/>
“She?”<br/>
“Yes. My Michèle, my love. Though she wouldn’t like to hear me say that. She is fiercely independent.” He touched his heart as he said this. Erik found it revolting. <br/>
“She does not come every night?”<br/>
“They keep her very busy. She organizes the food distribution, she teaches literacy, she marches. Sometimes she does not come because she needs to sleep in a real bed, above ground,” he laughed.<br/>
“I see.”<br/>
“Please come tomorrow. You will meet her then."<br/>
“Yes, good night then,” he said, disappearing into the outer darkness of the cellar whence he came. <br/>
     Michèle was not as amenable as Louis. She was instantly suspicious of Erik, as most women were. Louis introduced them and Erik made the mistake of saying “Mademoiselle,” with a slight bow as he sat at the little table. <br/>
“Do not call me that. I am Citoyenne Michèle,” she snapped.<br/>
“I did not mean to offend, Citoyenne.”<br/>
“Perhaps you do not understand. Mademoiselle aspires to marry and become Madame. But I will never be Madame, only Citoyenne. I am married only to the Revolution.” <br/>
     Louis smiled at her, but she was facing Erik with all the courage of an animal. She was brutal.<br/>
“Why do you wear a mask?” she asked, without hesitation or shame. <br/>
“Michèle!” Louis whispered, shifting in discomfort at her behavior.<br/>
“What, was it the Prussians? A knife fight? It is very disconcerting that you should hide your face.”<br/>
“I assure you, Citoyenne, it is better for all of us that way.” He stood up to leave. Louis stood as well.<br/>
“My apologies, Monsieur. It is just that she speaks her mind, as is her right. But we do not wish to offend you. Please, stay. Show her some of the tricks you showed me yesterday?”<br/>
     He sat down again and pulled out his cards. He worked hard to make her smile, but to no avail. After an hour or so, she merely uncrossed her arms. <br/>
“What kind of name is Erik?” she asked. “Don’t you have a surname? Where are you from?”<br/>
“I have no name and no country,” he said cryptically.<br/>
“Ah, then you are like us!” Louis smiled brightly. “We have no country either. We are internationalists. Our countrymen are all workers, no matter the nation.” <br/>
     Michèle shook her head slightly and stared at Erik intensely. There was something unsettling about him that went far beyond his mask. His eyes, for one. She could not see the whites of them. It was impossible to tell where he was looking, in which direction those black holes  darted. He was so much larger than they were; unnaturally tall, so that even when sitting he towered over them. And perhaps it was the way Louis looked at him. What was this interest of his? She had never known her love to be such a poor judge in character. Why didn’t he simply report him to his superiors? They would come and force this man to either enlist or get out. Then they wouldn’t have to be bothered by him ever again. <br/>
     On other nights, even when Louis politely told Erik that Michèle would come and that he should stay away, she felt his presence. As Louis’ lips worked their way down her neck she saw from over his shoulder two glints of light shining in the darkness. She shuddered and Louis believed it was from pleasure. Her eyes strained to perceive the shadow that stood within another shadow. His preternatural eyes burned her. She pressed her eyelids together, but did not tell Louis to stop. Louis continued to press himself against her with all the love of his innocent heart. Some small part of her wanted the man to see them. To see what he could never have.</p><p>     But he could have. He had awakened something in Louis. The young guard liked the discomfiting feeling their visitor gave him. There was something electric about the man. He did not for a moment believe that Erik was a mere worker or that he had not known the Siege was over. He knew Erik was full of lies and trickery. He found it irresistibly inspiriting.<br/>
     One evening when Michèle had promised to come, but did not, Erik himself emerged out of the darkness as if drawn in by Louis’ own will. He came and silently sat at the little table. He did not pull out his cards. Louis regarded him for a moment, this gaunt, elegant man. He leaned forward to ask,<br/>
“Who are you really, Monsieur?” <br/>
     Erik smiled from under his mask and clasped his hands before him on the table.<br/>
“Why do you still call me Monsieur?”<br/>
“It is just a habit, I suppose.” Louis leaned his chin into his hand, elbow on the table. “You are older than me.”<br/>
 “You do not call me Citoyen?”<br/>
“It doesn’t fit you. You don’t really care about being a citizen, do you?”<br/>
“No, I do not. ”  <br/>
“Who are you, Erik?”<br/>
     Erik shook his head. <br/>
“I am a mere worker. I have lived here for some time now. When M. Garnier returns, I will continue to assist in the construction of this palace. One day it will be the most beautiful opera house in all of Europe, in all the world.”<br/>
“The Commune wants to replace Garnier. They want to find an architect more in line with the values of the Revolution.”<br/>
“That would be a mistake,” Erik said, gravely.<br/>
“Perhaps. It is only what I hear. How long did you say you lived here? Why do you live here?” Louis asked innocently. <br/>
     Erik took some time to respond. Louis feared that he had offended the man, though he had tried to be more sensitive than Michèle. For the first time Louis noticed the man’s unusual eyes, flickering with the dim light of a dying fire. Suddenly, a gloved hand pressed Louis’ down onto the table with an unexpected harshness.<br/>
 “I live here so that I never have to talk to anyone about why I must live here.”<br/>
     Louis suddenly found the man frightening. His jaw quivered for a moment, but he did not pull his hand away. <br/>
“Of course. You can have your secrets.”<br/>
     Erik released his grip, but his hand lightly lingered over the boy’s. It had been such a long time since he had touched anyone, even if only through the leather of a glove. His heartache was audible, drumming in his own ears. He withdrew his tell-tale hand and leaned back from the table.<br/>
“I am also a musician,” he offered. <br/>
“I should like to hear you play one day.”<br/>
“I could play for you - and for Michèle. But not here. I shall have to bring you to my house.”<br/>
“I would like that,” Louis said. “Michèle too. She knows more about music than I do.”<br/>
“But we could sing softly here,” he leaned forward. “Shall we sing one of those café songs you Communards are so fond of?”<br/>
“No, no. I do not sing,” Louis laughed nervously.<br/>
“But I do.”<br/>
     The masked man opened his mouth to sing and Louis was filled with dread, though he knew the man meant him no harm. Under Erik’s enchanting voice, a song that was once merely melancholy was transformed into the most haunting melody.<br/>
<em>Quand nous chanterons le temps des cerises...</em><br/>
     This was a song to be sung with friends, in the warmth of a café, arms hung over shoulders. But the song the man sang was weighted with solitude. As if he had only ever heard it listening from outside a window looking in. <br/>
<em>Mais il est bien court, le temps des cerises...</em><br/>
<em>But it is very short, the time for cherries…</em><br/>
    Louis knew then that he would die. Maybe Michèle would live - she was so strong. But he would surely die. The Commune would die. They were all going to die.  A berceuse not for a child, but for a doomed revolution. <br/>
<em>J'aimerai toujours le temps des cerises, c'est de ce temps-là que je garde au cœur une plaie ouverte…</em><br/>
<em>I will always love the time of cherries, it is from that time I keep in my heart an open wound...</em><br/>
     Staring into the black holes of Erik’s eyes, Louis saw it all unfold before him. He resolved that when the time came, he would not look away. This man before him was all that his future held. There would be nothing after him.<br/>
“How old are you, Louis?”<br/>
“Twenty. Michèle is nineteen.”<br/>
“You are very young,” Erik sighed and stood up to leave. “I do not care about your Revolution. But I admire your energy. I am tired. I shall go home now.”<br/>
     His long, thin frame wavered in the lantern light. Louis also rose to his feet. He reached out and lightly touched Erik's arm and Erik's long fingers closed tightly over his wrist.<br/>
     But what dream was this? The boy did not pull away. Instead, he raised his other hand to Erik’s face and attempted to touch the mask. Erik leaned his head out of reach and directed Louis to the wall. Erik pressed himself against Louis just as he had seen Louis press Michèle, only he turned Louis away from him. <br/>
     Erik pulled Louis' military jacket from his shoulders. He reached for Louis’ blue red-striped trousers, but the boy’s fingers were already there, urgently opening himself up. Erik’s gloves folded over Louis’ sex, encasing him in their smooth coolness. The young guard gasped and splayed his hands on the wall before him. The gloves stroked him a few times, but soon went still so that he was compelled to thrust himself into them, to buck his hips towards the wall. Erik’s weight pressed against his back, but the disembodied gloves were all that Louis could feel. They were so cold, even his own heat did not seem to warm them. He was no stranger to the sensuality of the cold. He had spent many fireless nights shivering in Michèle’s arms as her cold hands caressed his face and her ice cold feet ran up the naked length of his calves. But always they ended the night warmer than they began. In Erik’s hands, his warmth was absorbed but not returned. The man was ice that did not melt.<br/>
    Louis cried out as he came against the wall, warm liquid running over the stone. His knees were weak. He felt drawn towards the floor, but Erik held him up with one trembling arm around his waist. He leaned his cheek against the rough, wet wall. With his other arm Erik stroked himself and when he was long and hard he spit into his fingers and slid them into Louis. A sob welled up and overflowed into the boy’s back as he worked his fingers. It had been so long since he had touched anyone. Was it the lantern light that obscured Louis’ vision? Was it the fervor of revolution, inefficiently spent by the Commune itself? They locked him underground for eight hours a night, what did they think would happen? It was not normal for normal people to spend so much time underground. <br/>
     He took the length of his sex and guided it slowly into Louis. They both slid to the floor in a faint of pleasure and pain. Louis fell over onto his hands, and Erik knelt behind him. He withdrew and plunged himself into Louis again. <br/>
“God - you are - so cold!” The words were pushed out with each thrust. “So cold!” <br/>
     With that, Erik became very still again and it was Louis who moved himself over Erik’s sex, kneeling and rising.<br/>
“My God!” Louis growled as he worked. In response, Erik’s grip on Louis’ hips tightened and he regained control of himself. He noted the sharpness of the boy’s bones in his hands. He found the malnourishment endearing, something they held in common. But it was the warmth that Erik craved, and that they did not hold in common. Even his seed was cold against the skin of Louis’ back. <br/>
     They lay on the cool, damp floor, panting for air, the chemicals of pleasure still coursing through their veins. Erik crawled over Louis’ body and slid a tender hand under his head. He pulled it close, his brittle lips quivering for a kiss. Louis turned away. He couldn’t explain to himself why or how it had happened. He had never been with a man; he had never been with anyone before or after Michèle.</p><p>He knew there would be nothing after Erik.</p><p> </p><p>________________________________</p><p>I think Erik would probably hate this song, but wouldn’t hesitate to use it to his advantage.</p><p>
  <b>Le temps de cerises (written in 1866): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edXFWik4ODA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edXFWik4ODA</a></b>
</p><p>Yves Montand, Les Temps des Cerises </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The Commune and the Garnier </p><p>In this story, I wanted to address Leroux’s references to the 1871 Paris Commune in the Phantom of the Opera. This included the passageway between Christine’s dressing room and the cellars (mon chemin des communards) and also the Communard dungeon (le cachot des communards) where Erik briefly keeps Raoul near the end. The Commune is mentioned when discussing the skeleton found under the Opera, the one the narrator insists is not a victim of the Commune, rather, the Opera Ghost himself.</p><p>The Commune really did occupy Garnier’s unfinished Opera house. They were forced out by the French Army during the violent last week of the Commune’s existence. Leroux’s narrator claims that, like the Opera Ghost, the dungeon is real, that he has even seen the Commune’s prisoner’s initials scratched into the walls with his own eyes. While there are many things Leroux writes about the Opera house that are true - there really is a lake - I have come to believe that there is no Commune-era dungeon down there and that journalists would not really have assumed the skeleton was a victim of the Commune (more likely a Communard victim of the French Army).</p><p>The line Leroux draws between Erik and the Commune is a violent one and belies his own bias against the Commune itself. Even Erik’s manic tone and terrorist plotting seem to be a reference to it. The Communards did bad things (which I’ll get to in Chapter 5). There was no need to invent the bad things that they did. They used existing prisons for their hostages. They probably did not use the Opera house for anything more than storage and distribution. But the Communards’ very presence in the Opera house - and their interference in the Paris Opera’s operations - open up a world of possibility for stories. </p><p>I have a lot of thoughts about this - and I would love to hear yours too.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. April 1871</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Michèle demands that Erik restore the balance of her relationship with Louis.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>   Louis continued to guard the gunpowder, Michèle continued her work in the grand foyer and her literacy classes in the evenings. Her student workers were distracted by rumors of Commune’s gains and losses; Michèle was distracted by her own concern for Louis. He spent too much time underground. He was growing disconnected from the events above. He was often tired when she visited him. Too sleepy to return her caresses.<br/>     Erik no longer spied on Louis, for he knew exactly where to find the boy. But he watched over Michèle as she moved around above ground. He ran along the rafters and secret passages he had installed during the construction of the magnificent building. His very own playhouse within a playhouse.<br/>     As the Versaillais Army encroached on the fringes of the city above, Erik invited the young couple below, to his house by the lake for an evening of music and wine.<br/>“What lake?”<br/>“Yes, there is a lake under the Opera house. But did you Communards not know this? You do not even know what treasure you possess in this palace.”<br/>     He led them five stories deeper through cellars and tunnels that only he knew until they came upon the shore of a dark lake. He helped them into his boat, first Louis, then Michèle. Though they each held a lantern, the light made only a small circle around them as he rowed them across the noiseless water. They could not see what lay before or behind them.<br/>      Louis found it all very exciting, as if he were in a fairy tale. But Michèle’s apprehension only grew with each powerful stroke of the oars. We are at his mercy, she thought of their strange escort. We could never find our way out if it should all go wrong.<br/>     At last they arrived at Erik’s underground house. It looked almost like an ordinary house except there was no sky above it. <br/>“It is not quite finished,” he said, unlocking the door. “I have only completed a few rooms. But I have many plans for this place.”<br/>     He brought them into his drawing room. The banal yellow room was damp with his aspirations. The waxy furniture pretended to be fine, but was in fact furniture for those middle-class who wished to appear wealthy. <br/>     He seemed to have dressed up for them. His sparse, dark hair had been combed and tied up neatly in the back with a black ribbon. But in the brighter lamp light she could finally see that the lapels of his elegant suit were frayed. And she would never have faulted a working man for wearing a threadbare suit, but then to dress it up with a patterned silk scarf and to move about that waxed room as he did caused the hairs on her arms to rise up. <br/>     She silently read the titles of the books on his shelves. Volumes on architecture, music, literature, mythology. She envied his library and the apparent abundance of time he had to read.<br/>“What do you think of my home?” he asked, spreading out his arms to welcome them, his eyes darting to and fro beneath the mask. While he had built his home in total secrecy, with the intention of a total privacy, he was ecstatic to have their young bodies invade his space with their vitality.<br/>“Come, see my bedroom through this doorway. It is the only other room, for now.”<br/>     He led them into a smaller room crammed with an ugly mahogany bed, with matching chairs and a marble-topped chest of drawers. There were doorways cut out of the other three walls, but they were filled with bricks, holding the place of doors that had not yet been fitted, for there was nothing yet behind them. Loose sheets of music were scattered across the carpeted floor.<br/>“I sleep here now, but I will build myself a larger room and this will be my dining room. You are very quiet, Citoyenne Michèle. What do you think?”<br/>“I think your furniture is an enemy of the people.” <br/>      To which he laughed. And then they all laughed.<br/>“It was my mother’s,” he said lightly.<br/>“My apologies,” she said softly. “I meant no offense.”<br/>“No mind, let us go back to the drawing room.”<br/> <br/>        He brought out a bottle of wine and three glasses. It delighted him immensely to see them sitting on his own sofa. Even if Michèle did think it was ugly. He did not sit down, but rather, paced in front of them, speaking excitedly.<br/>“I hear you Communards have taken the Archbishop of Paris hostage. What a jewel of leverage you have there. Still, does it not conflict with your more humanistic values? And it may be a mistake; he is well respected by people across the social strata. It would be a shame if anything should happen to him.”<br/>“He is a symbol of the old order,” Louis explained.<br/>“The very order we have turned on its head,” Michèle agreed. “ We are building a new Paris, one that has no need for an Archbishop. In any case, if they return Citoyen Blanqui to us, Bishop Darboy will be unharmed. Our values are not compromised.”<br/>“I am certain they are not.”<br/>     Wishing to change the unpleasant subject of the Archbishop’s kidnapping, Louis looked around in wonder and asked, “You built all of this yourself?”<br/>“I did,” Erik said, quite proud of himself. <br/>“You are no mere worker,” Michèle said with narrow eyes. “What are you really?”<br/>“An architect.”<br/>“What else have you built?”<br/>     He paused here. He did not often speak of his past. He did not often speak to anyone at all.<br/>“I lived abroad for many years. I constructed many wonders of great beauty.”<br/>“Ah, so you are an imperialist after all!” Louis quipped.<br/>“No. I was never under the employ of the French Government.” He pushed the tips of his gloved fingers together as he spoke. “In truth, I avoided other Frenchmen while I traveled. Erik has no country. No, I was no imperialist. I do not care about Empire or Royalty. Though I did spend time working in the court of the Shah of Persia.”<br/>     Michèle laughed out loud. She believed he was making a joke.<br/>“The royal court of the Shah of Persia! A far cry from living underground.” Tears pressed out of the corners of her eyes she found the idea so amusing. Erik laughed along with her. “Why ever did you leave?” <br/>He spoke softly, “I once made a palace so beautiful and full of wonder that they tried to gouge out my eyes so that I could never make its equal.”<br/>     Michèle went very quiet. It was too awful to be a lie. His intact eyes scanned her body, delighted in the discomfort he caused her. But behind the delight she could see the edges of a lifetime of pain.<br/>     Louis fidgeted nervously, mostly because he found Michèle’s behavior so rude, but also because he found Erik’s response to her entirely unpredictable. And also, because the further Erik’s stare penetrated her, the closer he came to revealing everything.<br/>     Erik stood before them and placed his violin under his chin.<br/>“I shall play some Mozart for you now.”<br/>     He played with such passion that even Michèle felt herself unwind under his command. She uncrossed her arms and closed her eyes. She felt herself lifted from that despised room and fell hard when the song ended.<br/>     Louis applauded, but Erik looked only at her.<br/>“It was very moving,” she said, meeting his dark gaze. <br/>“It was not too bourgeois for your tastes, Citoyenne?”<br/>“No,” she laughed. “Mozart is not too bourgeois for me. His Operas, on the other hand…” she smiled and tilted her head.<br/>“You do not like Opera?”<br/>“No, I must admit that I do not. Opera exploits the people for their stories and then bars their entry into concert halls, so that they may not even see themselves on stage.”<br/>“So it is the administration of Operas that you do not like. It is the managers that set the price and protocols. But what of the stories themselves? Do you not enjoy the music? Do you not find yourself in the heroines of the stage?”<br/>“Do you, Erik?”<br/>“I would rather lose myself in a story than to find myself. But you, young and beautiful and passionate as you are, do you not enjoy seeing yourself reflected back to you from the stage?”<br/>“The only Opera I have ever seen is the Marriage of Figaro. And yes, I saw myself on stage. Or rather, I saw my mother in the role of Suzanne, the servant girl perpetually hunted by the vile and lecherous Count Almaviva. I saw him grope and harass and attempt to violate the actress on stage and all I could think of was my own titled father who was so much more successful than the Count. And the audience laughed.”<br/>“Well, that is what the audience tends to do at a comedy,” Erik countered.<br/>“I could not laugh.”<br/>“Didn’t you know that Beaumarchais’ play was banned for a time? King Louis found it too hard on the poor aristocracy. It was Marie-Antoinette herself who advocated for it - and look at all the help it did her. And Mozart had to appeal to the Emperor Josef to pass his opera by the censors. The poor do not appreciate the risks that artists take to bring their stories to life. Such ingratitude!” He laughed.<br/>“I am not impressed," she said, looking away from him.<br/>“It seems you do not like to see yourself in a mirror any more than I do.”</p><p>     He stood again and refilled their glasses. He again placed the violin beneath his chin. <br/>“Now I will play my own work for you.”<br/>     What he played then was entirely different from the angelic and sublime melodies of Mozart. It cried out to the young couple with a longing all its own. As if it were the music itself that desired them, to caress them, to enter them. His long fingers ran along the strings the way they might dance across the skin of a lover. But he wielded the bow like a sword, cutting them up with each note, his elbow ribbing them from across the room.<br/>      Louis was once again filled with dread and sorrow. Michèle was moved by a fierce and unwanted rush of blood towards her sex. She turned to Louis and in disbelief followed his line of sight to Erik’s face. There she read the whole story. <br/>     Louis did not applaud the end of the song. Michèle’s face streamed with angry tears. Erik had steered the night towards some ferocious and unknown end.<br/>“You have disturbed the balance between us, Erik,” she said, suddenly. Louis whipped his head towards her. “You have caused us disharmony. You must set it right.” <br/>      She locked onto his eyes. They were infinitely dark.<br/>“<em>Michèle!</em>” Louis put his head in his hands. He now knew that she knew.<br/>“Have I caused anarchy in your little marriage?” Erik said coyly. <br/>“We indeed have a proper anarchist marriage, which is no marriage at all.” Michèle stood, pointing her finger. “We are equals in all things and there is no hierarchy between Louis and I. What you have caused is chaos. And you must set it right.”<br/>“Say the word and I will never touch him again,” he said to her.<br/>“No. That would not be enough to set things right.”<br/>     She walked to him, where he still grasped his violin. She meant to kiss him, but as she drew nearer to him than she had ever dared before, she smelled it. He smelled of death. She hesitated and instead of a kiss, she lay her hand on his chest, near his heart. She trembled with desire and jealousy and fear, all of which had been awakened in her just now. Such was the power of his terrible, eccentric compositions.<br/>     He trembled as well. He clasped her hand to him and gently laid the violin aside. Louis looked up in dismay. <br/>“<em>No, Michèle</em>,” he pleaded softly. <br/>     Erik held out his hand to him. <br/>“Come, Louis,” she called. “We must share in all things.”</p><p>     Erik led them back to his cramped little bedroom. He tried to kiss them, but they would not allow it. They tried to remove his jacket, his scarf, but he would not allow it. He slipped a gloved hand into Michèle’s white cotton shirt, which was really Louis’ shirt, and passed his fingers over her dove-soft breasts. She leaned into his touch and even placed her hands over his. But when he tried to touch her with his mouth again, she gently pushed him away by the cheek. With shaking hands he unbuttoned the rest of the shirt and pulled it away from her. He pulled the little rope that held up her trousers, which were really Louis’ trousers, and they fell to the floor. Louis undressed himself of his own accord.<br/>     He was moved by the sight of their young bodies. What waifs they were, their ribs and spines protruding from under their pale skin. He had always seen them as glowing with health, but it was only the blood that went to their cheeks when they were animated by politics or love-making. He could see now that they were not healthy. Their bodies belied a lifetime of hunger. Their emaciation rivaled his own. Still, he would keep his suit on. He had more illusions to maintain than they. <br/>     The rules established, he could begin the restitution Michèle demanded. <br/>     Louis held Michèle by the waist from behind, if only because he didn’t know where else to stand. Erik understood this to mean that she wanted to receive him standing, defiant. She faced the stranger before her with both courage and trepidation. He towered over them, causing them to stand in his shadow. His hands ran the length of her body; he worshipped her from her breasts to the tops of her naked thighs. She fought the urge to close her eyes. Her stare was brutally direct. Yet she trembled.<br/>“Why are you afraid of me, Michèle? Do not be afraid of me,” he said softly. He both reveled in and despaired of the fear he caused in her. To cause fear was to hold power over her, but it made love impossible. And he wanted so much to be loved.<br/>    Louis held her up against the pull of the floor. He pushed his face into her neck and wild hair. They had known only each other. There was no one before or after, only Michèle and Louis. He was wrong to have allowed this, to have invited it in by his weakness. But he could not say he regretted it now. Never had she been more beautiful, glistening in the lamp light, weak with pleasure. Never had he been able to see her from these angles. He looked down and saw Erik push his gloved fingers into her. Louis removed one of his hands from her breasts and threaded himself through his own fist. He did not know what to do with himself. It was unbearable. <br/>     And then Erik stood back and stroked himself before her gaze, his black eyes meeting hers. She gasped as she saw them flicker - the light in them wavered like the flame of a candle. He held his throbbing cock before her, allowing her to see it, delighting in her fear of the blue vein that visibly pulsed through it. He grasped her hips and she was lifted onto her toes. His music had done all the work for him, she was slick with desire for him, even as her body retreated into Louis’ embrace. <br/>“Cold!” she cried as he entered her. “You are so cold!” She was overcome and sunk further into Louis’ arms behind her.<br/>     Louis himself now trembled in jealousy. He both wanted her and wanted to be her. He wanted to stand where Erik stood before her, he wanted to receive Erik as she received him. He looked down at her body; he could see the throbbing shape of him under her skin. He reached out and pushed his palm against Erik’s cock as it moved under the front of her womb. She cried out in pleasure.<br/>     In anguish Louis pressed himself into her back. He let it slide down between the folds of her rump. He spit into his hand and urgently wet his cock. He did not want to hurt her, but he so desperately needed her too. As he entered that tight space, she cried out in pain and dug her fingers into Erik’s neck.<br/>“Forgive me, Michèle, forgive me, oh my love, I do not want to hurt you,” he said in a weakened voice.    <br/>     Her feet were completely lifted from the floor as they both possessed her. She was enraptured; they filled her up, there was no space left inside of her. Not for air, not for fear. All her pain was numbed by a delirium of pleasure. <br/>     They found a rhythm that would keep her suspended without fear of falling. Louis could feel Erik pulsing on the other side of her, throbbing through the wall of tissue between them. Rivulets of sweat ran off Erik’s jaw. Louis reached his hand out, across Michèle’s shoulder, and ran his finger along the edge of the mask. He wanted so badly to pull it away, to see his lover’s face in ecstasy. But Erik jerked his head away. <br/>“Don’t touch it.” <br/>“I want to see you.”<br/>“<em>Don’t touch it!</em>” he hissed. <br/>     Erik’s thrusts then intensified. He plunged himself deeper and deeper into Michèle until she finally grasped his arms and cried out his name. It was more than he could have hoped for. In gratitude he bent to kiss her. Again, she turned her face away.</p><p>     He lay between them. His bed was so much smaller with three bodies instead of only one.<br/>“You really share in all things?” he asked.<br/>“Yes. Since we were children,” Louis sleepily.<br/>“And you will share in me now?” He pulled their hands to his sunken chest.<br/>“Yes,” they both whispered.<br/>     And you will never, never leave me? he wanted to ask. But he did not. He did not really want to know the answer. After turning out the lamp, he rose and undressed himself. He put on a clean nightshirt. He desperately wanted to take off his mask. The edges were wet with sweat and chafed at his brittle skin. But he did not dare. Their hands tended to wander and as long as they could not see or feel the broken contours of his face they could think him handsome. But if wayward fingers were to cross over that place where the bridge of his nose might have been, then they would know. They would know that he was but a corpse.</p><p>     He woke them in the morning by lighting a lamp. They would have slept forever without the sun to shine in their faces. <br/>“Come, wake up children. I must take you above ground.”<br/>     The sheets of his bed looked like a murder scene; Michèle had bled everywhere. When she saw this she buried her head in her hands and cried softly in shame. <br/>“Let me wash them, please,” she whispered.<br/>     Louis took her up his arms. He slid his hands over her ears and kissed her forehead with all the tenderness of a parent.<br/>“Forgive us,” Louis whispered. “We did not mean to hurt you.”<br/>“Please make her stop crying,” Erik said to Louis, with urgency, as if Louis had the power to do so. “It gives me such pain to see women cry.”</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for reading this far! Comments, feedback, reviews are deeply appreciated.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. May 1871: La musique aux Tuileries</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In a world of inverted hierarchy, Erik and Michèle and Louis attend a series of Commune-sponsored concerts at the ancient Tuileries Palace.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“<em>The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service... </em>” Karl Marx</p><p> </p><p>     The Commune took over the Paris Opera at its temporary home on Rue le Peletier on the first of May. A meeting was called and the artists were informed they would no longer be forced to perform for the imperialists or the bourgeoisie. They were now to perform for the Revolution. Erik read this gossip with much interest. Just what did these anarchists want with the Opera?<br/>
     The first Commune concert at the Tuileries Palace was held on the sixth of May. For even as the Versaillais Army plotted to invade the city, the Commune sought to give the people the high culture they had so long been denied. They wanted the world to see their Revolution as sophisticated and not barbarous as it had been called by the bourgeoisie on their way out. And they were even charitable! The proceeds from the concert would benefit widows and orphans, victims of those Prussian bastards which the Versaillais government did not deem worthy enough of assistance. Perhaps, Erik thought, the Commune’s leaders would have been better off spending their efforts on military discipline and strategic planning. But then, what is a new world without music? <br/>
     The Carnaval of the Commune was set to turn the old order on its head and what better way than to open up the three hundred year old palace to be trampled through by the masses?</p><p>     A series of gilded mirrors lined the walls of the old throne room. Mirrors set against other mirrors, reflecting the crystalline candlelight of the chandeliers and the hideous velvet draperies a thousand times into the wall. Erik winced as he caught sight of himself, his horror also reflected a thousand times into the palace walls. He stepped out of view, but continued to observe the room through the mirror, so that he could keep his face turned away from the crowd.<br/>
     In each mirror a tableau: men in top hats, soldiers in caps, ladies in fine silk evening dresses, women like Michèle, for whom a simple lace shawl might be the single most luxurious item she owned. A pair of elegant women with feathers in their hair appeared in the frame. They held each other in a picturesque composition, one whispering in the other’s ear. For a moment, Erik saw in them a lovely portrait. He imagined that he existed in this world of beautiful things too. But then he recognized their painted faces. They were but mistresses of the night, dressed up in rented clothing. They frowned when they caught him staring at them in the mirror. They certainly recognized him too.<br/>
     Little Napoleon and Eugenie were not yet dead, but they were long gone and only their ghosts remained in that opulent room. The Empire was over. Erik came to understand the nature of the evening. They were all but pretenders playing fancy dress in a deserted palace that would never really belong to them. <br/>
“Is this room an enemy of the people, Citoyenne?” Erik asked in a whisper. <br/>
     Michèle laughed and took his arm. <br/>
“No, this room was paid for by the people. This is the people’s room,” she snorted.<br/>
    Under the dream of the Commune, Michèle moved about that horror of imperial decor as her own empress, observing a newly conquered territory on a map. She helped herself to the food and drink on offer. She had no shame in gnawing on a chicken bone, snapping it open to suck out the marrow, tossing the remains on the carpeted floor. He knew this was a performance; she had never been so indelicate in his own home.<br/>
     Erik gazed down at her, in her bland calico skirt and blouse. She had worn the skirt just to please him, he knew. How he desired the means to dress her up, to buy dresses of silk for her, to adorn her neck with jewels and matching earrings, to free her hair from that practical braid, to brush it out, to perfume it and twist it up atop her head. He would feed her meat every day until he could no longer see her ribs or spine, until the color of her skin reflected the health he restored in her. He would take her arm and sit with her in his completed Opera house, in his private box, and he would explain to her all the intricacies of plot and if the plot bored or offended her he would make love to her behind the curtains of the box, for she really was a minx and she would let him do anything to her, anywhere they could get away with it. She was not anything he looked for in a wife - not virginal, not obedient, not adoring. But she let him touch her and that was enough. That was enough to make him happy. She did not even have to kiss him to make him happy. Not really. <br/>
     Louis came up to them and took Michèle’s other arm. The three found seats together among the crowd before the music began. Louis sat between them, for it was Louis that first linked them together. Michèle held Louis’ hand while Louis’ knee pressed knowingly into Erik’s long leg. And if he were to make Michèle his wife, what of Louis? If Michèle were to be anyone’s wife she would be Louis’, and then what of Erik? Wouldn’t they like to live with him? If he could only feed them meat every day? And not cat or rat either! He smiled to himself. He should cease such fantasies. They could only lead to trouble. <br/>
     There was a curious feeling in his chest, a contented peace. They had wrested him out into the open world. He had not wanted to attend the concert. It was very hard for him to walk among other people. Certainly, he was aware of every stare, every whisper made in his wake. The leering eyes of workers and intellectuals and prostitutes alike burned holes in his back. Did these children really find him so charming that they were able to see past his ugliness when no one else could? Was his music really so enchanting as to bind them to him so shamelessly? Or was it the fervor of their doomed Revolution that blurred their eyes to what he really was?</p><p>     Erik studied the evening program, noting the mix of the high and the low. The crowd was raucous. The soldiers did not remove their caps or stop whistling during the Opera pieces. M. Aubert of the Théâtre Lyrique threatened to walk off the stage during his performance of Verdi’s Air du Bal Masqué when the crowd would not quiet down and give him his due respect. Even Erik was offended on his behalf. The National Guard’s military band periodically played from another room, noise bursting forth and interrupting the serious music. But Rosalie Bordas commanded every voice in the room as she led Le Marseillaise and later La Canaille. Louis had lied. He sang very well. Michèle and Louis smiled brightly at each other as they sang loudly,<br/>
<em>C'est la canai-ai-lle, eh bien, j'en suis!</em><br/>
     Erik hated the song. But still, he did not want it to end. <br/>
     <br/>
     They walked arm-in-arm up the Rue de la Paix, back to the incomplete Opera house. They held hands as they descended into his Underworld of cellars and tunnels and the little boat that floated over the noiseless water. He brought them inside, bubbly after the free champagne, sated after the free chicken. They sat on his sofa in his ugly yellow room and looked up at him as he brought out more wine for them. They were not quite ready for bed.<br/>
“What would you like? Shall I play music for you?”<br/>
     It was then that Michèle took out a little book from the pocket of her skirt. She had held it there the entire evening, waiting to present it to him. He read the title.<br/>
“Ah, writings of the Red Virgin,” he laughed. “Are you going to radicalize me, Citoyenne?” <br/>
“It is my duty at least to try, Citoyen,” she said tipsily. <br/>
“I am touched. I shall place it here on my shelf.” His hand ran across the titles of other books. <br/>
“Her sobriquet, the <em>Red Virgin</em> - it reminds me of a story I rather like. The Masque of the Red Death, have you read it?” He pulled out a volume and flipped the pages. “I have such a funny image in my head now of Louise Michel dancing with the Red Death of this story. I do not think she should find it funny at all, but I do. The anarchist virgin and the red plague dancing the night away. Spreading their curse across Paris.”<br/>
     Michèle frowned. Louis was near sleep and buried his head in her shoulder.<br/>
“Listen, I shall read it to you now, <em>The red death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its avatar and its seal - the madness and the horror of blood...</em>” He read the story in an animated and terrorizing voice. Michèle’s cheeks drained of color.<br/>
     When the story was over, Louis lay sleeping, his head over one arm of the sofa. <br/>
“Tell me, Michèle. What did you think of my story?”<br/>
“It is full of terror. Why do you like it so much?”<br/>
“Because my life has been full of terror.” He knelt before her and ran his hands over her skirt, across the tops of her thighs and towards her waist. He leaned his face very close to hers. “Tell me, my love, do you find me as terrible as the Red Death stalking about with his Death Head?”<br/>
     She cupped his frigid jaw with both hands and pulled his face closer. His heart leapt as he thought, for a moment, that she might kiss him.<br/>
“No. I think you are more like Prince Prospero, who has sealed himself from the world while everything falls apart outside.” She stroked his mask with her thumbs. “You should join us in our struggle. It is your struggle too.”<br/>
     He hid his head in her lap. He did not want to talk about anyone’s struggle but his own.<br/>
“Erik?” she asked, lightly stroking the side of his face. “What happened to you in Persia?”<br/>
     He did not want to talk about his struggles after all. Rather than answer her, he ran his hands under her skirts and up the insides of her legs. She looked over at Louis, sleeping soundly next to her. He looked so peaceful, there was no use in waking him.<br/>
     Erik drew the fabric around her waist. His thin, brittle lips made their way up her thighs, the leather of his mask dragging along her skin. He made his way to her sex. He kissed her there as if it were her true mouth. He even imagined it were true. He kissed the lips of her sex with all the gentleness with which he would have kissed her mouth, if only she would allow it. She clenched her legs around him and he imagined that her mouth was returning his kiss. His tongue found her little bud and he imagined that it was her own tongue that parted his lips. He lapped up the salt and honey that sprang forth from her core. She began to murmur quietly. He had never known how sweet her voice could be, free of all tart and bitterness. <br/>
“<em>Michèle,</em>” he whispered between sips of her. He hummed and drank her in. She pulled his head closer. His mask made red marks against her skin.</p><p>     Eventually, they all crept into his bed. They were so tired from the evening’s festivities and terrors that they promptly fell asleep in a mess of limbs. Later in the night, Louis, who had heard Erik’s dreadful story filtered through sleep and dream, sat up screaming in the night.<br/>
    Erik, who was already sitting up, watching over them, put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. <br/>
“It was the most awful thing!” Louis explained about his dream. “There was blood everywhere; in my eyes, in my nose, in my mouth.” He shuddered to remember it. Erik slid his arms around the boy’s naked waist. Even through the cloth of Erik’s nightshirt, the cold penetrated Louis’ back. <br/>
     Michèle awoke to a clinking of metal. The lanterns extinguished, there was no light and no hope of her eyes ever adjusting to this darkness. If not for his glowing eyes there would be nothing to see at all. The eyes danced before her, suspended in blackness. There was a familiar rhythm to this dance, and the accompanying music of skin brushing against skin, and the light percussion of the key to the storage room bouncing on its chain around Louis’ neck.</p><p>     There were three more concerts at the Tuileries Palace. Even with their numerous duties to the Commune, Michèle and Louis found time for music. Though Michèle did not enjoy the Opera pieces and Erik did not enjoy the café songs, the three enjoyed the thrill of discreetly yet plainly sitting among the audience in the company of not one but two lovers. <br/>
     The second concert, on the eleventh of May, assuaged the Commune’s loss of Fort Issy on the ninth. The third concert, on the eighteenth of May stoked the fires of victory over the fall of the vulgar and bellicose Vendôme Column on the sixteenth. Napoleon is dead! Fuck his nephew! The Empire is dead! Vive la Commune!<br/>
     Never had the Tuileries hosted such an assortment of Parisians. Never had Erik felt so self-assured moving about them. He kept his ugliness hidden as best he could; his cravat high on his neck, his gloves and mask neat and firmly in place, his hair, well his hair was thin and stringy, but he made an effort to keep it clean and combed and tied back. Michèle and Louis were not really beautiful people either. They were thin and pale and their faces were too angular. But they belonged to him. And next to them he felt that perhaps his life no longer needed to be as wretched as it had always been before.<br/>
     Always, the evenings ended in Erik’s home with a private concert or poetry recitation or, more rarely, a political debate before bed. And then bed, where they would run their hands over his broken body and they would forget everything happening above them.<br/>
     They did not know the fourth concert, on the twenty-first of May, would be the last. Even as Michèle and Louis and their fellow soldiers had spent all week pulling up paving stones and building a barricade along the Rue de Rivoli, they did not know. This concert was the grandest of all, with more food and more wine and with hundreds of musicians playing on multiple stages, both inside the palace and in the surrounding gardens, strung up with red paper lanterns. <br/>
     To close the night, a uniformed officer stood up on stage and announced,<br/>
“<em>Cityons! M. Thiers promised to enter Paris yesterday; M. Thiers did not, and he will not. I invite you to our next concert for the benefit of widows and orphans next Sunday, same place.</em>”<br/>
“Fuck Thiers!” someone shouted.<br/>
“Fuck his mother!” shouted another.<br/>
     But that concert was not meant to be.</p><p>     In the early morning of the twenty-second of May, Louis awoke in a cold sweat. Michèle slept softly next to him, but Erik was gone. A light from the drawing room bled into the darkness. He found Erik sitting upon the sofa reading. He quietly sat down next to him. <br/>
“I had that dream again. That my mouth was filled with blood.”<br/>
     Erik thoughtfully closed his book. <br/>
“I have had that dream before,” he said.<br/>
“I think I am near the end. If I should see any fighting, I do not think I will survive.”<br/>
“You could stay down here.”<br/>
     Louis shook his head. <br/>
“I could never do that. I would rather die than hide. But I would rather not die at all.”<br/>
“I would rather you not die.”<br/>
“I am worried about the Archbishop.” Louis looked into his lap and wrung his hands. “Thiers refuses to negotiate. I don’t know what they will do with him now.”<br/>
“Why do you care about an old priest?”<br/>
“He is not a bad man. He has even expressed sympathy for our cause. But they cannot just let him go.”<br/>
“He is a symbol of the old order. The new Paris doesn’t need an Archbishop. Isn’t that right?”<br/>
     Louis could not detect the mocking tone. <br/>
“I wish we could have our utopia without all the blood.”<br/>
     Erik laughed. He was such a boy after all!<br/>
“There is no such thing as utopia without blood.”<br/>
     The conversation was making Erik nostalgic for a certain time in his life when such nonsense was unthinkable. A time when his mouth was often full of blood. A time when people feared and respected him. He shook these thoughts away. No, no, no. This is much better, to have this innocent boy in my house talking about the things he fears that are not me. </p><p>“Show me your face.”<br/>
“Do not ask that of me.”<br/>
“You have seen all of us. I ask only to see your face.”<br/>
“Never.”<br/>
“What is it?” he asked gently. “A scar?”<br/>
     Erik shook his head. No, no, no. This was not what he wanted.<br/>
“Don’t you want to think me handsome, Louis? Don’t you want to pretend? If you see me, you will never be able to pretend again.”<br/>
     Louis touched his shoulder gently. <br/>
“There is no more time for pretending. Here, I will turn the lamp down very low.” Louis twisted the lantern’s wick so that the yellow light faded into a rich darkness. Erik turned it lower still, so that Louis could see only the outline of his head against the sofa.<br/>
     Louis reached out and lightly traced the edges of the mask with his fingertips. He ran his fingers around the back of Erik’s head, along the strings that held the mask in place. He tugged at them and caught the mask in his hand as it slipped away. <br/>
    Louis’ focus remained on Erik’s glowing, deep set eyes. Erik took Louis’ hand and brushed it across the cold, rough skin of his cheeks.<br/>
“Some people, when they see my face, cry out for God to save them,” he whispered. “I could not bear it if you did the same.”<br/>
     He pulled Louis’ fingers over his jaw and mouth and finally, over the place where his nose might have been. He waited for the boy to gasp or to pull his hand away. But he did not. He began to stroke Erik’s face of his own accord. He caressed the brittle skin with all the care he had given other parts of Erik’s body, though always separated by cloth. He circled the cavity of his nose with his thumbs. Erik closed his eyes and the light went out. <br/>
     Louis understood now. The mask, the smell, the eyes. Erik was his harbinger and his message had been received.<br/>
“Erik?”<br/>
     The glowing eyes reappeared in the darkness. <br/>
“You must never show Michèle.”</p><p> </p><p>_____________________________________</p><p><b>La Canaille (The riff-raff):</b> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=811-eXgctSc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=811-eXgctSc  </a></p><p>Written in 1865. This song really was sung by Rosalie Bordas at the first Commune concert at the Tuileries Palace on May 6, 1871. </p><p> </p><p><b>The New Babylon, 1929 Soviet silent film:</b> <b><br/>
</b> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWbK412Xx_o"> <b>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWbK412Xx_o</b> </a></p><p>Inspiration: So, I <em> know </em> this is a Soviet propaganda film. But if interested in the Commune, it’s worth watching. The visuals are hallucinatory, and the particular copy linked here is special. The original score that would have been played during the silent film was lost and this version has a modern, improvised soundtrack that only adds to the dreamlike/nightmarish ambience. Musical fanfic for Soviet propaganda. Russian actress Yelena Kuzmina’s portrayal of Louise (not <em> the </em> Louise Michel, but clearly a reference to her) is so intense and passionate that her face (and hair) became what I thought of when writing Michèle for this story (who is also meant to be a reference to Louise Michel). But her love interest, Jean, is <em> not </em>the model for Louis.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The Commune really did take over the Paris Opera. The Commune really did hold a series of four concerts at the Tuileries Palace in May of 1871. There was really an announcement made for the fifth concert that never happened, even as the Versaillais Army was just hours away from attacking the Commune. All the historical information for this chapter came from a journal article: Moments musicaux: High culture in the Paris Commune, by Delphine Mordey. Truth is stranger than fanfic.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. May 1871: La semaine sanglante commence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Versaillais Army attacks and the Commune begins to collapse. La semaine sanglante begins.<br/></p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“I did not recognize it by the ugliness of the head, for all men are ugly when they have been dead as long as that, but by the plain gold ring which he wore…”</em>
</p><p><em>To arms! That Paris be bristling with barricades, and that, behind these improvised ramparts, it will hurl again its cry of war, its cry of pride, its cry of defiance, but its cry of victory; because Paris, with its barricades, is undefeatable. That revolutionary Paris, that Paris of great days, does its duty; the Commune and the Committee of Public Safety will do theirs!</em><br/>May 22, 1871</p><p>     Michèle and Louis were finally able to work side by side again, in service to their beloved Commune. When they emerged from Erik’s Underworld, they found that the city was already under attack by the Versaillais. They were directed to go to the corner of the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Florentin and help defend the barricades there. Louis and Michèle, still in her calico skirt from the concert the night before, were handed rifles and told to hurry. They could hear shots and shelling in the distance as they ran through the streets. They never made it all the way to Rue de Rivoli. In their undisciplined way, they stopped to help erect another barricade at the Madeleine, stacking paving stones and rolling empty wine barrels into the street before the church’s austere columns. When the Versaillais drew near, Michèle and Louis hid behind the barricade with the others, shoulder to shoulder, aiming their rifles, holding their breath. Young girls came by to give them coffee between rounds of shooting.<br/>     Michèle and Louis shared in all things. But they did not die together. When the Communards could no longer hold the barricade, someone had the idea to run into the Madeleine for refuge. Michèle and Louis ran with them, through the iron gates. They searched the cold exterior for any hidden entrance, any trap door, any secret hiding place. <br/>     Louis was shot in the back. He cried out as his blood spilled against the wall of the church’s foundation, warm liquid running over the stone. His knees went weak. He felt drawn towards the earth, but Michèle held him up, her trembling arms around his waist. He leaned his cheek against the stone wall. <br/>“<em>Michèle,</em>” he whispered. “I love you.”<br/>“I love you! I have always loved you!”<br/>“Now run, please run,” he kissed her hands. A sob welled up in her and overflowed as she shook her head. They both slid to the ground. She kissed his mouth and found that it was already full of blood. Louis fell over onto his hands, looking down at the lake of red flowing angrily from his stomach. He looked up at her once more. “Run!”<br/>     She ran towards the back of the church and out onto the Rue Tronchet. She saw a cellar window open and a man called out to her. He waved her over and she dove inside. There were already several families hiding there. They pressed her for information - no one knew how the Versaillais had entered the city so easily. Someone must have betrayed the Commune, didn’t she think so? But she couldn’t hear them. She laid her rifle over her lap. She covered her face with her hair and howled into her hands. <br/>     When the sun went down and the battle seemed to be over, she crept out of the cellar and walked back to the church. The barricade smoldered. The bodies had been stacked together neatly as if they were planks of wood. She did not know who had done this. She would have to search through them all to find him. She knelt down and wept. She did not have the strength to do it.<br/>     She heard footsteps behind her and soon felt his cold hand on her shoulder. <br/>“Is he here among them?” he asked. She looked up at him and nodded mournfully. She was not even surprised to see him. “We should take him. They will throw all of these bodies into unmarked ditches.”<br/>“How do you know that?”<br/>“It is what is always done in times like these.”<br/>     He began to sort through the fresh corpses. They were an assorted group of unfortunate souls: young boys and old women and soldiers and prostitutes and other common people. Michèle noted the ease with which he went about this grim task. But she did not question it; she was too grateful. At last he found Louis’ face among them. He pulled him out and lifted him effortlessly. Louis was so small in his long arms.<br/>     Michèle saw a flash of gold from a limp hand jutting out of the pile Erik had made. Without hesitation she reached out and pulled the ring from the anonymous dead finger. <br/>     The streets were momentarily quiet as they made their way back from the Madeleine to the Opera house. She followed him silently. He led her through his own entrance, down into the first cellar, to the foot of the secret passageway, built just a few months before, when all the world was new.<br/>“We shall bury him here. That would be better than a ditch, wouldn’t it?” <br/>“Yes,” she said flatly. <br/>“I will do it. But first I must fetch a shovel from my house.”<br/>     Michèle felt around Louis’ cold neck. She found the key, still on its chain, and delicately slipped it over his head. <br/>“Do you think they have tools in the storage room?” she asked.<br/>     Erik took the key from her hand and opened the door. They were both struck by the vast quantities of gunpowder. Untouched. Unguarded. It had all been forgotten.<br/>     They found a shovel inside, along with stores of food and arms. The inside walls were covered in graffiti; a good number of initials of young soldiers who would soon be dead. Outnumbered and undisciplined, all the gunpowder in the world wouldn’t be able to save them from the Versaillais. Erik locked the door behind him and gave the key back to Michèle. She slipped the chain over her own head.<br/>     They buried him near the little well. Erik dug the grave and placed the boy into it with care. Michèle removed his blue military jacket and pulled it over her shoulders. She pulled out the little gold ring she had stolen at the Madeleine and slipped it onto his finger. Erik did not ask her why, but she told him anyway.<br/>“So that some day, when they find him, they will know he was loved.”<br/>     She kissed his cold, bloodied lips and wept into his dead chest. Erik wished he could do the same. He hoped that someday someone would even do the same for him.<br/>“He loved everyone. I loved only him," she said, running her fingers through his dark hair. "And now I hate everyone."<br/>     Erik worried that she might leave him then. That she might go back out into the night to continue fighting. She still wore her rifle over her shoulder. But she stayed close to him as he led her to the boat. <br/>     <br/>    By the time they reached the shore of his house, she had crumpled into the floorboards in grief and exhaustion. He lifted her out of the boat and carried her over the threshold of his home. He laid her gently on his sofa and knelt down before her face. He did not know what to do. He did not know how to comfort her. Her sorrow was his own, but he understood she had more right to mourn Louis than he did. He held her hand and smoothed her dark hair away from her tear-lined cheeks. She allowed all of this.<br/>    He stood before her with his violin and played a requiem of his own composition, of his own heart. The instrument wept in his hands. Tears flowed from under his mask and fell in droplets from his jaw. She shut her eyes against her own tears. She looked as if she were sleeping. He set down his violin and knelt beside her again. He took her palms and lifted them to his rotten mouth, but she pulled them away. Wordlessly, she wrapped her arms around his neck. He lifted her up and took her to bed.</p><p>    He laid her down gently. He unlaced her boots and pulled them from her feet. He took a wet cloth and cleaned the soot from her face. Then he tentatively laid down next to her without touching her. It was she that reached out for his hand. She lifted it before her and pinched each finger of his glove until she could slide it off his cold, bony hand. She laced her fingers in his and with her other fingers stroked the translucent skin, the visible tendons, veins, bones, the yellow nails.<br/>“What is wrong with you?” she asked in her blunt way.<br/>“I do not know. I have never known.”<br/>     She sighed sadly. She pitied him deeply, he knew. Her lack of curiosity to see his face was a confounding relief. She did not seem to want to know. As if she already knew.<br/>“I am so tired,” she said. “I want to sleep forever.”<br/>“<em>Michèle</em>,” he whispered into her ear, passing his hand over her face. “Close your eyes and pretend. Pretend that I am Louis. Here, turn around so that you do not have to look at me. You can pretend that he is here with you.” He tugged on her shoulder until she turned her back into him. His arms embraced her across her chest, he pulled her hips into the curve of his body. “There, isn’t that better, my love? <br/>“How could I pretend you are anyone other than Erik?” she whispered sadly. <br/>     He held her so tightly she could barely breathe. He brushed the hair away from her ear and whispered, in a perfect imitation of Louis’ tender voice,<br/>“<em>Michèle, I have always loved you</em>.”<br/>     She put her hands over her face and wailed in pain. <br/>“What sorcery is that?”<br/>“I only wanted to comfort you. Forgive me! Forgive me!” he implored her.<br/>“You must never do that again!” she demanded.<br/>“Never, never. <em>Oh, Michèle!</em>” he gasped, subtly shaking her with his sobs. “You must love me! Stay with me here. You could be my wife, I would take such good care of you, you should never want for anything. Only love me!” He buried his mask into her thick unwashed hair, fragrant with her sweat and gunpowder.<br/>“The one I love is dead,” she wept, hiding her face in the pillow.<br/>“You could pretend that you love me and one day you will. Michèle, I am so lonely, please do not leave me alone down here,” he wept into her hair. Her skin began to crawl - he had worked his face so deeply into her mane that he found her neck. He was trying to kiss her again.<br/>“Don’t!” <br/>“Michèle!” he sobbed.<br/>“You really are mad, Erik. I will never marry anyone. You know that.” She took his hand and brought it around to rest on her chest. “I am so tired. Please, just sleep next to me. Please just let me sleep.”<br/>“Yes, yes. Forgive me. Rest well, my love.”<br/>     He did not loosen his hold on her as she drifted into fitful dreams. He could not sleep himself. He ran his fingers through her hair and watched over her. He could kiss her sex now and she would sing, but if he were to kiss her lips - or even her forehead, she would wake up shrieking. His mouth terrified her. How could anyone love him with a mouth such as his? How could he be so foolish as to talk of marriage? She had said many times she would never marry, and she wasn’t fit to be a wife anyway. But she was so warm, and she was right here, and he never, never wanted to let her go.<br/>     What if he could keep her here? What if he could enchant her with his music? Or drug her with his Mazenderani poisons? What if he could keep her so sated with pleasure that she forgot Louis’ beautiful face altogether? Oh, it was all foolishness. And then he thought of Louis and his beautiful, too angular face, and his sharp hips, and the sweetness of his touch upon his naked visage and tears streamed from the corners of his eyes and under his wretched mask. How he wished he could take it off now! </p><p>     When she woke up she told him she was hungry. He had no food to offer her. He made her a cup of tea, but he did not even have milk. <br/>“I need bread. I haven’t eaten anything since the concert. Oh, that seems like a lifetime ago,” she said gravely. <br/>“I will go above and find food for you.”<br/>“I will go with you.”<br/>“Stay here and rest, my love.”<br/>“No, I have hidden down here long enough,” she said, lacing up her boots and threading her arms through Louis' bloodstained jacket. “I must go back. I cannot stay here like a coward.”<br/>“You are not well, Michèle. Rest here a little longer. I will go and buy some bread and milk and I will return shortly.”<br/>“No! You will not leave me down here by myself. Let us both go.” She stood and slung her rifle over her shoulder. “Take me above.”<br/>     When she emerged from his Underworld, Michèle was distressed to see that it was dark again. She had lost an entire day down below. She felt immense guilt for taking refuge under the Opera house rather than continuing the fight alongside the others. She looked up at the night sky and saw that it was glowing red. People were running towards the river. Their steps were echoed by the shattering of glass and shots.<br/>“They’ve set the Tuileries on fire!” someone shouted. <br/>     She turned to look at Erik. He shook his head. He seemed almost amused.<br/>“Let us go and see what you Communards have done now.” <br/>      She looked back up at the red sky and her heart swelled with wonder. She would let this fire burn away all her sorrow. She would let her rage free and break everything before her.                                                                               </p><p>      She hated everything.</p><p>___________________________________</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>Commune barricades in front of the Madeleine.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>There really were barricades at the Rue de Rivoli and the Madeleine. I've tried to connect events during the Commune to places referenced in Leroux's novel wherever there really is a connection. I read that at some point during this last week, around 300 Communards were killed at the Madeleine, though I couldn't find an article with a date or specifics, so it could be a legend?  </p><p>The Madeleine seems to mean something specific to Erik in the novel. It is where he insists he will marry Christine. I can't tell if this is because it would be the most bourgeois thing possible or if there is some other meaning associated with that church. But it also just happened to be the site of fighting and death and maybe that holds some significance? </p><p>Thoughts? I would really, really love to hear anyone's thoughts about any of this as now I'm swimming in Commune everything and there's no one else to talk to about it!!!!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. May 1871: Burn it down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Erik does not care about the Commune, but he does like to see the world burn.</p><p>Oh, and Happy Bastille Day.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>May 23, 1871   </p><p>    A violent wind rushed over the city from the West, stoking the angry flames of the Commune. To those who were said to have been on the hillsides watching through their opera glasses, it seemed as if the whole city had descended into hell. They imagined the furies had been unchained and they took on the appearance of frenzied prostitutes rampaging through the city in lustful destruction.<br/>     It was not as random as the legends would later say. The Tuileries Palace was not destroyed by an angry mob of ravenous peasants. The interiors were thoughtfully laced with tar and turpentine and petroleum, and the dome was strung up with explosives in such a way that nothing could have saved it. The building burned for two days. Its ruins simmered for weeks, along with those of the Hôtel de Ville and the city’s archives; all the births and deaths of centuries of Parisians turned to ash. They would have burned the Louvre and Notre Dame, if they had been able. Their spite was vast.<br/>     Erik and Michèle stood on the Rue de Rivoli and watched in awe. The heat of the conflagration would allow them no closer. They heard the shattering of glass and imagined the crystal chandeliers crashing down and the great mirrors splintering into thousands of pieces as fire ripped along the velvet draperies. All memory turned to dust: brief moments when those hideous rooms really were the rooms of the people, fleeting evenings when they were three instead of two. The destruction moved something in them and they sought each other’s hands without realizing it. Cheers of <em>Fuck Thiers! Fuck Versailles! Vive la Commune!</em> echoed all around them. <br/>“They want Paris back the way it was - well, they cannot have it!” she hissed. “If we cannot have our new world, they cannot have their old!” Erik, who did not care about why it burned, was mesmerized all the same. <br/>     He looked behind him at the fine apartments that lined the Rue de Rivoli. The windows of the first floor had already been blown out and heat was popping the glass of the upper floor windows, one by one. Certainly, he thought, they would have left long ago. The Daroga would have been clever enough to leave at the very beginning of the Commune. He would have known the outcome before it unfolded. It occurred to Erik that he should climb the stairs and see for himself, just to be sure, but Michèle pulled at his hand.<br/>“I am still hungry,” she said. <br/>      They found a bakery. Michèle picked up a loose paving stone and threw it through the window. They stepped through the glass and found stale bread on racks in the back. She stuffed her mouth and then she stuffed the pockets of her skirts for later. Reenergized, she stepped out onto the street with a wildness he had never seen in her before. <br/>     He ran along behind her as she threw stones through the windows of more shops. They came upon a block that had already been set alight and they each took a blazing torch with them as they moved on to the next. They were swept up in a crowd of other revelers. Everywhere there were half empty bottles of petroleum which they collected together and stuffed with rags and lit with their torches before hurling into broken windows. <br/>     The small explosions rekindled something in him. There was a part of his past life that he had hidden deep within himself in an effort to enter society, employment, normalcy. But he had missed the power of it - the potency of mayhem. He looked over at her face, lit up with the red glow that illuminated the entire city and he knew that he had never understood her. He had wanted her to be his wife because he wanted to be the kind of man that would have a wife. But why did he want to be that kind of man? She would never be his wife. She was a fury of fire and he was ready to worship her. Together they could cause untold chaos.<br/>     They ran through the night, lighting the streets ablaze in spite and anger and delight. They were not like the others, who wept for the Commune. They wept for Louis and they laughed to see the trail of their terrible work behind them. <br/>     Near dawn, a Versaillais soldier stood in her way. He pointed his rifle in her face.<br/>“Halt! Drop your weapon you communist whore!” <br/>     But the man had not seen Erik in the shadows. Very quickly Erik had straddled him, his thumbs closing over the soldier’s throat. Michèle pulled the man’s rifle out of his reach. She lifted her own as she watched Erik work on him so expertly. <br/>“Move aside, my love. Let me have him!” she shouted. But Erik’s fingers continued to milk the man’s neck. He whimpered and struggled, but Erik’s strength was too great. He soon began to wither in exhaustion and fear of the masked man who towered over his body. The pose was so intimate that Michèle felt a pang of jealousy.<br/>     When it was done, Erik stood to review the results of his labor. She offered him the dead soldier’s rifle, but he waved it away.<br/>“You can see I have no need for that.” He sighed. It felt good, what he had done. He had forgotten how good it could feel. “Let us go home.”<br/>     He slid his arm under her rifle and wrapped it around her waist as they walked back towards the Opera. His heart swelled to feel her slip her arm around his own narrow waist. The morning sun was red, shining through a haze of smoke.</p><p>     He would have been as tender as Louis, if she had wanted it. He knew how tender Louis’ touch could be. He had seen the love in the way he kissed her and pressed her against the wall and rolled her in his own dead mother's bed. And he remembered Louis’ delicate touch on his own body, his soft fingers tracing the contours of his face, his hardened sex pressing against his back. He would have given all of that to Michèle, if she had allowed it. But she did not want his tenderness or love. <br/>“Make me forget everything!” she demanded. “Make it hurt so that I cannot feel anything!”<br/>     He had tried to lay her down gently in his bed, but she wanted to stand. He held her against the bricks used to fill the empty doorway. No matter how hard he thrust into her, she insisted it was not enough.<br/>“Split me in two! Don’t stop until you have cut me open!”<br/>     She forced tears from his eyes. He did not want to hurt her, he wanted only to worship her. But when he sank to his knees to bury his head between her legs she pushed his mouth away and pulled him back up to his feet by his jaw. <br/>     He realized she had hit the back of her head against the bricks too many times. Blood trickled out of her smoke-scented hair. He again tried to pull her back towards the bed, where she could not injure herself, but she resisted. So he slid his arms beneath her thighs and pinned her to the wall with his cock, just as she wanted. He pressed his own forehead to the bricks. One day he would tear those bricks down and build a hallway behind the door. He would build a proper bedroom for himself. And he would build another lovely bedroom, for someone as yet unknown to him. And further still, behind the bourgeois façade, he would build a room of deviant illusion, a room of mirror and sun, of terror and death. But all this would come later. For now, he pressed his face into the wall as he thrust himself into her, harder, more violently, exactly as she demanded of him. She was sucking - not the life - but the death out of him. </p><p>     He sat next to the bed, unable to sleep. He picked up Louis’ jacket from the floor, where he had thrown it after pulling it from her shoulders. Louis’ blood had dried and turned a rich brown. He reverently fingered the charred outline of the bullet holes in the back. Erik marveled that he himself had lived so long and had not yet met such a fate. <br/>     He could see the blood on the pillow below her head, on the sheets below her waist. He regretted that he had been so obedient to her desires. He had not wanted to hurt her. Not really. He loved her more now than ever before. Now that he had really seen her, he knew they were the same. They hated everyone. And they could share in that hate, the way she had shared everything else with Louis. If Louis had taken all that was good in her with him, Erik would be grateful to be left with the damaged pieces that remained.<br/>     He turned away from the bed so that he could remove his mask. He lifted the jacket to his face. It no longer smelled like Louis. It smelled only of death. He wept into the ruined garment. If he thought all that he had witnessed and done above could not hurt him, he was wrong.<br/>     He heard her stir behind him. He composed himself and replaced the mask. He turned to find Michèle sitting straight up in the bed, eyes wide, as if she had just woken from a nightmare. She held up the key on the chain around her neck as if it were a holy relic. </p><p>“I am going to burn down the Opera house.” </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>However much I may admire the Commune's revolutionary courage and ideals, they committed unforgivable acts. By the end, many Parisians hated even the memory of the Commune. So when Leroux connected his villain, Erik, to the Commune through the remnants they supposedly left behind within the Garnier, he is certainly leaning into that hate and fear for effect. But there were other artists, painters Eduoard Manet and Gustave Courbert for example, who remained sympathetic to the Commune and demonstrated that through their art.</p><p>Thanks for reading this far - I know this probably isn't the most fun fic ever. It's pretty dark. I would love to know what you think about how this story is unfolding! Comments and reviews make my day!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. May 1871: Der Freischütz</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Commune goes down in flames of its own making. As does Erik's relationship with Michèle.<br/>This is the second to last chapter - not the last.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>
     Michèle awoke to the sound of his weeping. She did not know exactly why he wept, but the sound of it filled her heart with dread. The room felt hollow without Louis. The emptiness had eaten away at her each day without him. When she begged Erik to hurt her it was, in part, to fill this emptiness. But now it crept back into her chest with each sob he heaved into Louis’ jacket. She could not stay there with him much longer.<br/>
     She turned her back to him, while he sat in the chair, with his back to her. She let her mind wander through the day before, running through the streets, torching every flammable thing in sight. Torching even her body. She quivered under the sheet. Her body ached. And still she felt empty. <br/>
     She had been a very bad soldier. She should still be above with her rifle. There were barricades that had not yet fallen. There were still ways she could give her life to the Revolution. If she could just leave this room behind. <br/>
     She made a very small movement, just a turn of her head on the blood speckled pillow. And then she heard it, that light, clinking sound of the key dropping on its chain. It was tangled in her hair. She picked it out and held it away from her face. What a little key for such a lot of gunpowder. <br/>
     <br/>
     Erik laughed at her. <br/>
“I think we have set enough things on fire, my love.” <br/>
     He reached out and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. He smiled at her with a glint of mischief behind his weary eyes.<br/>
“There is enough gunpowder to burn it down, isn’t there?”<br/>
“There is enough to blow up the entire quartier,” he cackled. He found her very funny just then.<br/>
     Her eyes flickered. <br/>
“Good,” she whispered. She rose out of the bed and began to move about the room, collecting her filthy skirts and blouse. She began to dress as she spoke out loud. “It will be grander than the Tuileries, won’t it? It will show them. They’ve stolen our future. We will steal theirs.” <br/>
     She took Louis’ jacket from his hands and slid her thin arms through the sleeves. She pulled her hair out from under the collar and let it fall down her back in a wild, stiff mess of sweat and blood and smoke. She sat down on the edge of the bed and began to lace up her boots.<br/>
“Michèle,” he said in a low voice. But she did not look up. She continued working at her laces, as if she could not hear him, letting her hair fall into her face. He reached out and took her chin in his bare hand, forcing her to meet his gaze.<br/>
“Michèle, you know I could never let you do that.” <br/>
     She shrugged off his touch. She rose to her feet and stood before him. She placed her hands on his shoulders and ran them up his neck, for he was still her lover and she was still allowed to caress him in this way. She searched his deep set eyes for some understanding.  <br/>
“It is a temple to wealth. It was built on the backs of the poor - with their taxes and their labor. Why should peasants have to pay for an Opera house? No, there is no place for a building like this in the new Paris.”<br/>
“Even peasants have a need for music,” he said, closing his eyes at her touch, breathing in her smokey warmth. His arms circled her waist and brought her close.<br/>
“No peasant will ever sit before that stage. And neither will you, Erik. The Opera wasn’t built for us,” she said softly, still running her fingers across his skin.<br/>
     He grasped her wrists.<br/>
“Why do you care so much for this building?” she asked.<br/>
“I built it with my own hands.” <br/>
“You and hundreds of other workers. And what gratitude did you ever receive? Do you think they will invite you to the inauguration?” she asked.<br/>
     His cold grip turned to fists over her fingers.<br/>
“Oh,” her eyes widened. “You do! You think they will send an invitation down here, begging for the pleasure of your company on their grand opening night? Poor Erik!” <br/>
“I will be there,” he growled. “On the first night and every night. This palace is mine. And everything in it is mine.” He stood and seized her face in both hands. “Even you, Michèle.” <br/>
     His long fingers stretched out across her cheeks and through her hair. He drew her mouth close to his. He did not mean to be so rough, but his hold on her only hardened as she struggled to escape it. He pressed his mask into the side of her face with a surprising desperation.  <br/>
“Why?” he despaired. “Why can I not have all of you?”<br/>
     She wrested herself from his grasp and held up the key between them, ignoring his claim over her.<br/>
“Come, Erik. Let us go up there. I am serious. I mean to burn it all down.” <br/>
“No!” he shouted angrily.<br/>
“But why do you protect it?” she shouted back. <br/>
“It is my home,” he said in exasperation.<br/>
“It is your prison!” <br/>
     She ran her fingers over his mask, along his cool forehead, through his dark hair. <br/>
“Only the Commune welcomed you. Only under the Commune could you have come out of the shadows, to spend evenings enjoying music in a real palace. Only under the Commune could you have filled your bed with not one but two of us. I know it is all over now. This is my last act of service. Join me. Let us do it together. Why are you laughing?”<br/>
“When have I ever cared about the Revolution? Your leaders have been fools. To think it could continue forever. To think the French Army wouldn’t crush it all under their boots. They couldn’t even organize a concert correctly. You are children!”<br/>
     She seethed.<br/>
“The world has never seen such courage! They will speak of what we have done for generations,” she spat with indignation.<br/>
“You have not endeared yourselves to history, my love. Burning down half the city will not be remembered well,” he smiled viciously. <br/>
“You speak as if you had no part in it!”<br/>
“Oh - I did! And what fun it was. But I didn’t do it for your little Revolution. I do not care who governs this city. I have my own empire to rule over.”<br/>
     She began to pace the room in fury.<br/>
“And what empire is this? You think us the fools? You, who have built your home underneath the Opera in the hope that you might one day be invited to their little parties. You, who think you will wear that threadbare suit of yours when they fête you and all your workers for the job well done on the - not the beautiful stage or the heavenly ceiling - but the cellars! The dark and hellish cellars!”<br/>
“Shut up!”<br/>
“Is it too much to hear? You think there will be a place for you at their table? You think they will ask for your opinion on their music selections? On the costumes? On the performances of the little ballet girls? Do you think that anyone cares how beautifully you play the violin when all they can see is your grotesquerie?”<br/>
“You must shut up!”<br/>
     She continued with merciless honesty.<br/>
“You think there will be a velvet seat waiting for you? You think you will lose yourself in every performance and then you will not have to remember what you really are. You, with your mask and your smell of death and your - your predilections. You will never be allowed through the front door!”<br/>
“Stop!” he sobbed, falling to his knees, holding his ears, blocking her scalding words.<br/>
“You can call it an empire all you like - you still live underground. Better to make it a proper tomb - let it cave in over you! Let me do it!” <br/>
 “I would kill you before I let you do that!” <br/>
     She laughed at him and moved towards the door, sliding her rifle across her chest. She seemed to enjoy the sound of her own voice, heavy with venom. It was so easy to torment him. It was so hard to stop.<br/>
“You would so quickly kill the one you desire to kiss? The one you wanted to make your wife? You won’t kill me. You love me.” She hurled the word love at him as an insult as she darted through his house, out to the shore of the lake.<br/>
     He jumped to his feet and in but a few strides he had caught the back of her jacket in his hands. They were both surprised by the force of his rage as he spun her towards him. One hand held her by the throat while the other searched her chest for the key. His eyes were blank with concentration. His touch revealed years of experience. She reached out and tore at his face as he fumbled and pulled at the chain. She scratched at those black eyes. She reached out again and again until her fingertips slipped under the leather and she was able to tear it away.<br/>
     As she had hoped, he freed her and folded his body over in shame. He covered his face with his hands and she did the same. They each cowered in fear of the other’s ugliness. Michèle’s bitter heart was now as ugly as his face. The key fell to the floor, forgotten.<br/>
     Suddenly he was wailing, the strength and volume of his unnatural voice piercing her mind and pulling her to the ground. His voice was everywhere and nowhere more than inside her head. A voice so vivid it sparked color in her vision and smelled of sulfur deep in her sinuses. <br/>
“<em>Why Michèle? Why would you want to see me? Now you will never love me!</em>”<br/>
   She covered her ears, she pounded her head on the ground. She could do nothing to make it stop. Her rifle was useless to her against his voice.<br/>
“<em>Can you not even look at what you have done to me?</em>”<br/>
     She timidly dared to look up at him and saw his eyes now glowed with furor. And behind his eyes she saw that his face was as harrowing as she had always imagined it. Even while laying next to him or cradling his head in her hands. She had always known what he was. <br/>
“<em>But look at me Michèle! Know that Louis will soon be the same. The worms will come and eat his nose and lips, and then you will not even be able to tell us apart! Look at me!</em>” <br/>
     He knelt before her and crushed her head in the bones of his fingers. She was weak with fear. He could have kissed her then and she would have lacked the will to stop him. But he wanted only to be sure she heard him - as if his voice were not already embedded in every part of her body.<br/>
“<em>My vicious harpy! Better to go above now and martyr yourself out there on the streets. Martyr yourself down here, against me, and no one will hear you scream and no one will ever know you were here! You must go now!</em>”<br/>
     She violently nodded her head through tears of terror. He pulled her up by her arm and pushed her into his boat. </p><p>      Rivulets of tears streamed through her parted fingers. She was dismayed by what she had done. She regretted how she had taunted him, how she had wounded him. But then she remembered his hands around her throat and she pushed her pity down deep inside herself. He did not deserve it. For her, every bond between them had been broken.<br/>
     About halfway to the other side he stopped rowing. She could hear him sniffling behind her. She felt a cool terror grow in the space behind her. She cried out in fright when he fell upon her back with a wail of sorrow. <br/>
“Forgive me, Michèle! Please don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me alone down here!”<br/>
     He dug his face into her hair, wrapping his long arms around her. His sobs were awful to behold, rhythmic and violent. She feared he might tip the boat with his emotion. She began to tremble beneath him.<br/>
“Do not be afraid of me, Michèle! I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would never hurt you!”<br/>
“You must let me go now,” she whispered. “Please, I cannot breathe.”<br/>
“No, no, no, you cannot leave!” he cried childishly, tightening his embrace around her. “Please stop crying. It pains me to hear you cry.”<br/>
“Please let go. It is better this way, Erik.” <br/>
“You must love me! Please love me. Please only say that you love me.” <br/>
     He slid to the floor of the boat and crawled around her, disturbing the boat on the water. His head pushed itself into her lap. His tears prevented him from replacing his mask. She reached out and caressed his bare cheek. He closed his eyes, cringing at the sweetness of her touch, unexpected after all the bile that had come out of her mouth. She pet him lightly, stroking his face, running her hands through the thin strands of his hair.<br/>
“My poor Erik. You must row me to the other side now so that I can do as you said and die above. It won’t change anything if I stay. If you keep me here, I promise that one day, when you are not looking, I shall blow up your Opera house.”<br/>
     <br/>
     Her instinct was to bolt out of the boat the moment it reached the cement shore. But she did not know the way, even from there. And she had no lantern. She realized then how stupid she had been, to so thoroughly insult the one person who could free her. She followed him obediently, up through the darkness, and she waited patiently behind him as he unlocked the gate that would release her onto the Rue Scribe. She pushed her shoulders back and adjusted her rifle across her chest.<br/>
“Michèle,” he began mournfully. She hated hearing her name in his mouth now. She didn’t want to hear any of it. She did not even want to say goodbye. As soon as the gate was unlocked she moved past his body and flung it open. She ran off into the night.</p><p>      Of course he followed her. He took a moment to secure his mask and he followed her like a shadow should. Where she ran, he ran close behind her. He thought, at first, that he could protect her as he had before. Maybe then she would return with him. When the first soldier stepped in front of her, he moved quickly to intervene. The unfortunate fellow ran off with only a few scratches. But instead of gratitude, she turned to him and screamed at him. <br/>
"Stop following me! You reek of death!"<br/>
     So he let her run further ahead of him, never losing sight of her. <br/>
     An old woman ran in the opposite direction, crying into her hands.<br/>
“They’ve killed them! They’ve killed the Archbishop and all the hostages! Have mercy on us!”<br/>
     There were both cheers and cries from the others on the street.<br/>
“Now they will say we are savages!”<br/>
“And they will be right!”<br/>
“Vive la Commune!”<br/>
      This news took the wind out of Michèle. She stopped running, suddenly unsure of where she should go or what she should be doing with her last hours. She looked up at the night sky, still red with fire and hazy with smoke. It had been days since she had seen the sun. She turned and looked behind her. She found him stalled in the darkness at the edge of the street, watching her. She felt the shadow of Louis pass between them and she knew he would have been sorry to see it all end this way. She turned from Erik and continued to listlessly wander the night. <br/>
     She came across another band of Versaillais. Her rifle and jacket marked her as an unmistakable enemy. <br/>
“Drop your weapon, whore!” And she did. She put up her hands in defeat.<br/>
     They tied her hands and took her into their possession. They marched her east, eventually joining another procession of prisoners on the Boulevard Haussmann. Corpses were strewn about the street, though sometimes neatly stacked on the side. Men, women, children. Some in the uniform of the National Guard, others in the uniform of the poor. The prisoners were mocked and pelted by small crowds of angry Parisians who had already returned to that part of the city. <br/>
“Savage beasts get what they deserve!”<br/>
“Fuck the Commune!”<br/>
     They turned onto the Rue le Peletier and she slowly came to understand where they were being led. <br/>
“No, no, no,” she shook her head. And then she began to laugh. It was a too-loud laugh that caused another prisoner to turn and scold her for disrespecting the dead all around them. But he stopped because he could see that she had gone mad.</p><p>     An Opera house can serve many purposes. The Communards understood this and so did the Versaillais. An Opera house is built for performance, the performers but little dolls in a great playhouse. Whose were the hands that moved the little dolls around the stage? In times of peace it would be a director, a man chosen for his artistic ability to guide his players in acts of illusory world building. But in times of war, an Opera house might be the site of other kinds of performance, with other kinds of dolls, and other kinds of men directing the world building. The Commune was never able to hold its scheduled performance at the Opéra de la rue Le Peletier. The Versaillais organized a spectacle of another nature.<br/>
     A soldier stood before the arched façade of the Opera, diverting prisoners either right or left. Behind him, his bored mates who did not feel the need to participate in this task broke into the auditorium. They mounted the stage and someone belted out a song in a mockery of the art. Another wandered backstage and found a trouve of costumes from the last performance, before the Commune, before the Siege, before any of this awful mess. Der Freischütz, was it? They shrugged. None of them had ever attended an opera. They laughed as they donned the props and costumes. One wore a grimacing skull, another a wolf head, another shrouded himself in a black robe. And when they had finished their fun onstage, they went outside into the courtyard where the prisoners were being kept waiting for their mock trials and real death sentences. They stood on the steps for a better view, or rather, so that they were in full view of the prisoners, rifles slung over their shoulders, or resting between their legs. They delighted in the fear they evoked in the faces of those shuffling in line towards the wall and into the line of fire, seven at a time, into a fusillade of magic bullets. <br/>
     Michèle tried in vain to keep her laughter at bay. She knew she was distressing the others and it agonized her to hurt them. She did not want to hurt anyone. She had sacrificed everything to die next to them. She pressed her hands over her mouth, but snorts of amusement burst through her fingers.<br/>
“Citoyenne!”<br/>
“You must hush!” <br/>
“You will attract their attention. They will push you to the front of the line. You must contain yourself!”<br/>
     But did no one else find it funny? How she hated Opera! She hated it! Now she and all the other prisoners would be but players in some performance with no script and no score and no end. For even when they were dead they would continue to play their parts. And look now at the stairs! Those grisly figures that watched them, the skull, the wolf, the shadow. Were they soldiers? Were they even real?<br/>
     There appeared a masked man who wore no costume or uniform. Only evening dress. She knew him by the yellow glow of his eyes, burning her from across the courtyard, following her as she was pressed up against the wall. Had he come to terrorize her or to comfort her? All she could do was laugh.  </p><p>     Had he come for terror or for comfort? He hoped that when he threw his voice across the courtyard - his own voice - that the words he spoke into her ear brought her some sense of peace. <br/>
     He could have kissed her when she was dead. She would not turn away from him ever again. And if he were to wade into that mass of bodies that was now stacked in the corner of the courtyard of the Opéra de la rue Le Peletier, he would find her and finally take her as his bride. He would carry her home, to the new Opera. He would bury her next to Louis in such a way that whoever found them later would know that, not only did they love each other, they were loved by another who had so lovingly placed them there, by the well, under his Communist Road. <br/>
     But he could not do these things. He could not bear to go after her. He left her there, to later be buried in a ditch alongside the others. She hated everyone. But she did love the Revolution.</p><p> </p><p>______________________________________________</p><p>The scene at the Opera on the Rue Le Peletier came directly from the last section of the same article I used to write Chapter 3: Moments musicaux: High culture in the Paris Commune, by Delphine Mordey. She wrote briefly about the incident of Versaillais soldiers wearing costumes and props from Der Freischütz while overseeing executions in the courtyard of the Opera house. I found this the most chilling detail of all my research on the Commune - it is almost too perfectly strange and metaphorical to be true. I looked up her reference for this story, just to confirm is wasn't just a legend that arose over time. It came from a first hand account of the Opera's archivist. If you're interested:</p><p>Guerre et Commune, impressions d'un hospitalier. 1870-1871 / Louis Gallet Gallet, Louis</p><p>
  <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k54965142/f325.image.texteImage"> https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k54965142/f325.image.texteImage </a>
</p><p>And then, because I wasn't familiar with Der Freischütz, I looked up a few performances of the Wolf Glen scene that the skulls and shrouds would have been used for. The linked performance is so weird and creepy it actually gave me a nightmare. You only need to watch the first 30 seconds to understand. Watch out for the rabbit. Again, it is just too-perfect horror that soldiers would wear skulls from a German opera about magic bullets and deals with the Devil while watching prisoners being executed at the Opera house, just a few months after the Prussian Siege of Paris.  </p><p>Weber, Der Freischütz (NAWM 126), Wolf's Glen scene</p><p>
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FojsiGXZYDU&amp;t=290s"> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FojsiGXZYDU&amp;t=290s </a>
</p><p> </p><p>Random fact: Leroux's description of Sorelli's dressing room in Chapter 1: "On the walls hung a few engravings, relics of the mother, who had known the glories of the old Opera in the Rue le Peletier..."                                                                 Does this imply Sorelli's mother was once a dancer there? That would put her in the group of dancers immortalized by Degas' paintings there. Leroux really slips in so many details!</p><p> </p><p>Thank you for reading! Please come for the last chapter in a few days. Leave a comment if there's some piece you'd like to see resolved before the end, or for any feedback at all. Honestly, it is so fun to receive comments it makes my entire day to just receive one. Beijos!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. June 1871</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Erik takes the long way home.<br/>This is the last chapter of The Communist Road is Mine - I hope you enjoy.<br/>And for all the protesters in Portland - wear a mask and stay safe!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>     Dawn approached and the red sun began to burn away the fog that drifted through the city. But the smoke remained. Erik was made anxious by an urgent need to get off the street. Soon, the light would illuminate his curious appearance and make him a target of one side or the other. His lack of a weapon or uniform protected him from being shot on sight, but he had already been stopped at two Versaillais check points, harassed for not having papers, heckled for his mask.<br/>
     The idea of going back to the house by the lake was unbearable. He would rather walk until he collapsed in exhaustion than to go back there now. He found that his feet made their own path and soon they led him to the Rue de Rivoli, and up the stairs, and to the door, before he had given it any thought at all. The door was already open.<br/>
“Oh, Daroga,” he called out, treading lightly over the broken glass on the floor. “Are you there?”<br/>
     All the windows had been blown out. The apartment was situated directly across from the Tuileries gardens, which of course, were now covered in ash. The shell of the palace framed a ruined interior, still smoldering days later. Ash and smoke had blown in through the broken windows and dusted all the fine furniture in a white powder. As expected, there was no one there. The daroga was very clever and he must have known how all of this would end at the very beginning. As visible foreigners, the daroga and his servant would have been caught between both sides, their loyalties never trusted, neutrality never an option. <br/>
     But they would return. They would pack up whatever lush country home had been rented for the duration of Paris’ insanity and they would return to the city to find the apartment trashed, nearly ruined. He would wait for them there. He would rather sleep atop broken glass and ash in the anticipation of company than go to sleep in his own house, which now held no hope for the warmth of other bodies. <br/>
     He tried to push the door closed behind him, but the handle had been broken and it no longer latched. He rummaged around the kitchen for food, but it had all been looted. He found nothing except jars of spices and a single rotten apple left in an expensive bowl on the counter. He reached his arm deep into the pantry and on the bottom shelf was rewarded with two bottles of wine, hidden behind a few jars of vinegar and rosewater. He huffed. How the daroga liked to pretend he did not enjoy his wine. <br/>
     Even in that scene of disaster, a sense of security enveloped him and the fatigue came soon after. He tucked a bottle under each arm and made his way to the bedroom. It was a lovely room overlooking the gardens, thus it had been severely damaged. The ash-dusted bed was covered in broken glass, but it had been neatly made before being abandoned and when Erik pulled back the silk duvet he found that the sheets were clean and white underneath. <br/>
     He stripped himself of his suit, sullied and - as she had so bitterly pointed out to him - threadbare. There was still water in a ceramic pitcher next to a basin. He removed his mask, hardened with sweat and grime, and washed his face. When he looked up over the basin he had the misfortune of catching sight of himself in the mirror. The mirror had been broken and he saw the horror not once, but tens of times, for every shard made a new mirror and he filled each with his hideousness. He winced and looked down at the water, now dark with dirt. He smashed his fist into the mirror until all the shards fell out of the wooden frame.<br/>
     He pulled the curtains against the morning light and the open air and crawled into the bed with the bottles. He fell asleep while nursing the second and did not wake up for several days. <br/>
     Louis slid into the bed behind him while Michèle’s arms reached out before him, seeking his embrace, as if war and hate and death had never come between them. Their mouths fell upon him without hesitation or repulsion. Louis bit into his ear; Michèle kissed his forehead with all the tenderness he himself had wanted to show to her. They still belonged to him. He reached his hand back behind his head and gently pulled Louis’ mouth to his. It was everything he imagined a kiss might be; warm and possessive. Michèle pulled his face to hers and gave him her own kiss. It did not burn as he expected from her, but was soft and sweet as he had always wanted it to be. He pressed his thin lips together. He wet them with his tongue. He wept with happiness. It was all the happiness in the world to be kissed! It went on for days. All the days that he was sleeping they laid next to him, caressing him, keeping him warm. Louis pulled his hips close and held him in his arms, pressing his bare chest against Erik’s bare skin, while Erik buried his own face into Michèle’s hair, smelling the layers of her, the gunpowder, the smoke, the sweat, the sex, the perfume. But Michèle didn’t perfume her hair. He pushed his face deeper into her neck, chasing the scent of myrrh until he realized it was the daroga’s pillow that was perfumed, because he was in the daroga’s bed; a cold, empty, glass covered bed. He pressed his eyes tight, trying desperately to go back to sleep. He felt them both fade away. His hands opened and closed as he tried to grasp the last strands of her hair. <br/>
     He heard voices outside the bedroom. The daroga and servant had returned! He forgot about his devastation for just a moment. The daroga would come in and Erik would explain why he was sleeping in his bed. And he would understand perfectly why Erik could not be alone. He was the only one who would understand what Erik had seen. He would have Darius make them tea and he would sit by the bed and they would talk and he would not be alone, for just a little longer. He could hear them talking. Why didn’t they come in? He tried to call out to them, but he couldn’t form the words. He heard someone walk into the room. <em>Oh, Daroga</em>, he meant to say. He could hear them suck in their breath and quickly turn around and leave. He felt his face with his hands. He did not know where he had left his mask. He knew the daroga did not like to see him without his mask. He heard them speaking again, only they didn’t sound like the daroga or his servant. <br/>
“Christ! There’s a body in the bed,” a voice said.<br/>
“There’s nothing here anyway. No food. No silver. Let’s go,” said another. <br/>
     He heard the crunching of glass under their feet as they left. He sat up in the bed. He was covered in red vomit. Whatever he had not consumed from the second bottle had spilled all over the bed as well. The sheets were no longer white. He rose slowly out of the bed. He washed his face and chest in the basin. He looked over at his filthy suit, crumpled in the corner. He couldn’t bear to put it on again. He opened the armoire and ran his hand along the daroga’s collection of clothing. They were of similar height, but the daroga was a much fleshier man and whatever Erik selected would be too loose. He could have it tailored later. He could tailor it himself. He took out a fine wool suit to wear and another to carry with him. Never again would he be caught in such humiliating poverty by a woman. <br/>
     He waited until dark before leaving. The apartment was in such a bad state that he would be blamed for things he did not do. But if he left now, he could get away with everything.  </p><p>     The Commune had finally collapsed while he was sleeping. The last one hundred and forty-seven Communards fled to the Père La-chaise, shooting and hiding behind tombstones until they were surrounded by hopelessness. They were lined up against a wall and buried on site. When Erik walked outside that night he could feel it in the air; the spell had been broken. <br/>
     He walked cautiously along the Rue de la Paix. If he allowed it, the corners of his eyes would catch shadowy figures following him; a skull-face, a wolf. There were still many bodies on the street. The Commune had fallen hard and along with it all the bureaucracy and government responsibility. It was up to the Third Republic to clean up the mess now. A carriage carrying a load of simple wooden coffins rolled by. All those fresh faced soldiers, children really, to end up in those little boxes - and only if they were lucky enough not to be shoved into a ditch. <br/>
     Erik, who had walked with death for as long as he could remember, was somehow not so lucky to be one of them, but would have to continue this punishment of living. A coffin would make a fine bed for someone so tired of life. A coffin could be no worse than the empty bed that awaited him underground. <br/>
   And yet, he was also pleased with himself for not having chosen the losing side. She had tried so hard to make him choose. But Erik only ever chose his own side. He stood in solidarity with no one. That was why he was still walking about. Revoltingly rotten, yet still breathing.</p><p>          He could hear her voice as his boat moved across the water, her last words to him a paracusia of poison. He tried to shake her out of his head, but he could not. He found the little key glittering on the shore of the lake. He remembered darkly the sound the chain had made as it snapped from her neck. He slipped it into his pocket and entered the house. <br/>
     He would keep very busy. He went about scrubbing her blood out of his bedsheets. He tried to scrub the blood out of the brick wall too, but it was useless. And the wall wasn’t so important. He would eventually tear it down as he continued to work on his house, making it grander and more luxurious than ever. And then the house would be free of her. She had left nothing behind but bloodstains and a little book, which he would never read beyond the first insufferable page. But he would pull it out from time to time and remember the evening she had given it to him and the taste of her would fill his mouth.<br/>
     The Communards had been thrown out of the Opera house by the Versaillais over a week ago. It was most likely that anyone else who had ever possessed a key to the storage room or knew anything about the road was now dead or in prison. They were his domain now, and his alone. <br/>
  He suspected his Communist road would prove useful in ways he hadn’t yet imagined. He searched the fringes of the construction site for plaster and paint and proceeded to cover the entrance that had been hacked out of the wall of the dressing room. When he was finished, no one would ever know there was a road behind the wall that would lead directly to his sunken empire. He would wait for the day when its purpose would make itself known to him.<br/>
     He found in the storage room enough food to allow him to stay underground for months without the torture of having to look upon another person’s face. And there was more gunpowder than he could have ever known what to do with, if she had not already seeded his mind with some idea. He could sell it, but his inclination was to hoard it. Despite that he had concealed the entrance to the road, he decided to move the barrels, one by one, to his own house for safekeeping. <br/>
     As he rolled the small barrels down to the shore of the lake, he found the voices of the young soldiers ringing in his head. He found himself humming their silly songs and sometimes mimicking their mimicry of street vendors, calling out to himself, <br/>
<em>Barrels, barrels, have you any barrels to sell? What a lot of barrels!</em><br/>
     Something about the potential of the barrels excited him, the same way the tuning of an instrument or the tying of a noose excited him. He would build the rest of his house around them; their violent energy would feed him through the lonely times ahead.<br/>
     Sometimes as he worked, he thought of Louis and the little table where they used to sit and talk and he would sing to himself the little song he would never sing with friends in the warmth of a café and he would feel nostalgic for it all the same, <br/>
<em>Mais il est bien court, le temps des cerises...</em><br/>
<em>But it is very short, the time for cherries…</em><br/>
     It had been a very short time after all. Just a few months and the spell was broken, the veil lifted. He wondered, as he rowed all those barrels across the lake, what might have come of Michèle and Louis if he had never emerged from the shadows and revealed himself to them. He was certain they would have met the same fate, pressed against a wall, any wall in Paris, at the Madeleine, the Peletier, the Père La-chaise. He had not changed much for them, though he could not lose the feeling that somehow he had. He remembered the reverent caress of Louis’ fingertips upon his face. The boy had looked fearlessly into his Death’s head, knowing that he would die in just a few hours. But Erik had not caused him to die. Not really. And how he had wanted to save Michèle! But she did not want to be saved. She had run away from him and flung insults in his face. </p><p>     M. Garnier returned to Paris. Construction resumed in October and continued for four more years. In that time, Erik built his Underworld Empire upwards, inverted roots reaching out into every floor above. Secret tunnels and corridors allowed him to roam freely and unseen. His mouth watered for the day when every dressing room would be filled, when set pieces and props would litter the stage, when music would fill the halls and all of it would be his.<br/>
     Erik’s contract had been for the foundation only and his employment at the Opera had long since ended. But the ongoing construction meant an abundance of materials to grift so that he could finally complete his own palace. During the day he would creep about his playhouse within the playhouse and spy on the workers and eavesdrop on M. Garnier’s administrators. At night he would make his rounds of the site and pilfer what he needed: wooden beams, plaster, nails, paint, lush carpeting, velvet draperies, lengths of mirror. An entire piano. If he passed by work plans laid out in the open, he could not resist the urge to review them and mark them up with his own ideas. Occasionally, his alterations made their way into the completed work. Then he was very pleased. <br/>
        The night before the grand inaugural performance, Erik donned his self-tailored suit, carried a bottle of wine and climbed up through the hollowed out column that opened onto Box Five. The sight of the gilded stage, so full of beauty and the potential for still more beauty, moved him to tears. The crystals of the darkened chandelier sparkled dimly from unknown sources of light. He thought of Michèle and Louis for the first time in a long time. He wished he could have shown them this. He was enormously proud of the building and his small role in its creation and he had no one to show it to. He imagined them there, on either side of him, holding his hands, Louis’ knee pressing into his. Ah, he would have to ask the concierge for a footstool for Michèle, to allow her silk skirts to be properly spread around her slippered feet.<br/>
     Emperor Napoleon III was now dead and would never see the Opera house he had commissioned. Eugenie was still in exile and would never grace the opulent box that had been designed especially for her and her foolish husband. But here Erik sat in his own private box, overlooking the crown jewel of his own empire of music and beauty. Michèle had never understood. She did not care for music and she knew nothing about beauty. He knew he had been right to stop her. She had pushed him very far. He had saved the Opera from her terrorism and it was worth the price he had paid. But still, he imagined she sat by his side, holding his hand, because she was the only woman who had ever willingly held his hand. He finished his bottle of wine and felt very content. After waiting for so long, the very next evening the great hall would be filled with music and he would know happiness at last.</p><p>     Only it was all as Michèle had said it would be. As if she had laid a curse on him merely by speaking the truth. There was no way to keep Box Five open for himself on the inaugural night. He had not yet learned how to utilize concierges to curry his notes and demands and threats. He spent the first two acts of La Juive watching through a peephole he had drilled into the column, seething with rage at the indignity and the poor acoustics and the disinterested occupants of the box who held a lively conversation throughout. He had never understood Michèle until that night. He could scarcely see the glittering audience below him, but he hated them all the same. He remembered the first concert at the Tuileries and the feel of Michèle’s arm in his and Louis’ knee pressed against him as they listened to that awful music together. He remembered watching the burning of the palace together, her hand searching for his as they listened to the sound of breaking glass and crashing chandeliers and he knew she had been right about everything.<br/>
     That very night he opened up the cellar under his house where he kept the barrels. He wept over them as they called out to him with their violent vibrations. His greatest wish was to burn it all down. Instead, he gathered all the loose sheets of composition paper spread out on his floor and sat at the piano. As if struck by the fires of hell he went to work. He composed for days without sleep. Music that expressed all the rage and pain and sorrow of his wretched existence. Triumphant music for the empire of his heart. Music that burned. </p><p> </p><p>__________________________________________</p><p> </p><p>Rue de Rivoli after the Semaine Sanglante. Poor Daroga, right? I just figured out how to embed photos, so I went back to Chapter 4 and added a photo of the barricade at the Madeleine, in case you'd like to see it.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you so much for reading to the end. Sorry it was so bleak. Let me know what you thought - even if you haven't commented before, I'd love to hear from you. Beijos!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>